Using Kermit on Sun Systems

[Rahul Dhesi]

There are some modems that will try to automatically determine whether to
use tone or pulse dialing.  They will send out the first digit as a tone,
then wait to see what happens.  If the first digit doesn't immediately
cause the dial tone to cease, the modem will assume that pulse dialing is
needed and redial the whole thing using pulses.

My diagnosis is that your dial string does not include either "T" or "P"
to tell the modem whether to use tone or pulse dialing, so it is using its
auto-determination method described above.  When the number is internal
the dial tone ceases after the first digit and the modem continues with
tone dialing.  But when the number is external, the initial "9" gives you
another dial tone so that you can now dial an external number.  The modem
notices that the dial tone is still there and switches to pulse mode and
tries again.

The solution is to use an explicit "T" in the dial command.  Thus instead
of saying "ATD9-408-123-4567" you need to do "ATDT9-408-123-4567".

How you should tell your Kermit to do this is another question.  Some
programs, like many implementations of Kermit, hard-code modem-dialing
instructions and make it impossible to change them without changing the
source code.  If this is the case with the program you are using you may
be in trouble.

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