What's wrong with ct? (candidate for FAQ?)

[Ray Shwake]

In article <1990Jun6.202530.8038 at aqdata.uucp> sullivan at aqdata.uucp (Michael T. Sullivan) writes:
>The subject says it all.  I haven't tried using it before since I've always
>been told "it's broken" (without an explanation).  Now, somebody wants me
>to use ct and and "it's broken".  I try to ct a number and I get back:
>
>	No 2400 dialers on this system

Yes, ct is broken on a number of systems. I seem to recall one manual page
(either for a Zilog 8000 or an early release ATT 3B2) which said something
like "This program has not been shown to work"! But recently (yesterday)
I got it working on a Computer Consoles (CCI) 6/32 MP.

You don't say what system/environment you're trying to run it on, or
what command you tried. Here, I simply used "ct [-h] [-v] -s2400 phone_no".
I used the -h and -v options if I wished to force a callout to a tty line
other than the current line. Also, note that ACU dialing must be supported.
Cu and uucp can live with direct lines, but not ct.

I did have a bit of trouble dealing with hangups to the current tty
(most of our modems interface to mux ports), and finally resorted to a
simple "at" command, viz:

	% at now +1 min
	ct -s2400 phone_no
	<Ctrl>-D
	% logout