Have you ever gotten someone trying to send you a fax on your voice-only landline?

And you can't hangup and get a new dialtone until the caller gets tired?

Wouldn't it be nice to have an audio file on your PC which contains a "Not available" or "Hang up and go away" set of screaching warbling tones that you could play into your phone to make the calling fax machine go away?

Anyone know how to do this?

Cheers

Firstly, if you have an old 56k modem - you can make your PC into a fax machine - and let it receive the fax.

If you don't want to do that, you can actually get shot of an incoming call by pressing Recall and hanging up. The phone will ring 7 rings, then disconnect the caller.

The line will eventually clear when the caller's equipment drops the line, usually a couple of minutes after you answer. It's the same when some one calls you, it is the caller that ends the call, hence you can put the phone down and then walk upstairs and pick the other phone up and the caller will still be there.

You can either connect a fax to the line, as above attach a fax / modem card to your PC and the line, or...

If you get another call and you want to clear the line straight down when you hear the fax tones, press the recall button, wait about 5 seconds, put the phone down, it will ring you back, pick up the phone, wait about 5 seconds then put the phone down, this will clear the line down. Same if someone forgets to hang up.

However if your number is programmed into the fax polling, then the fax may make several attempts until it fails on several calls.

Hmmm...

Isn't there a series of tones that an answering fax machine sends to the caller to say "I am broken, or offline" etc ?

Seems like you could just play those tones to tell the calling fax to bugger off.