Re: using German phone lines

[Tim Vetter <vfr@stm537.ubszh.net.CH>]

> I am going to Frankfurt next week, and hope to be able to
> dial in with (old!) Mwave software. But Radio Shack had no
> special plug available (they said that their plug kit was a
> new item not available for another two weeks). What do I need,
> and how do I get it (or make it!)

You can get the physical adaptor to go from modular to the German  
plug at any decent electronics store there.  However at least *some*  
of the available adaptors invert the pair combinations wrt North  
American devices, ie black/yellow active instead of red/green, so if  
you're not getting dialtone, this may be the problem.  At this  
point get out your pocket knife!

Myself, if I'm not sure about telecom standards at my destination,  
I bring a small hardware hacking kit consisting of alligator clips,  
electrical tape, a couple modular male-to-female adaptors, and  
scavenged bits of 4-conductor cabling with male modular plugs on one  
or both ends.  That gives you a fair degree of flexibility in  
adapting to the quirks of the local system.  Frequently I will  
dismantle the jack box so I can attach directly to loop.  Although  
naturally any attempt to attach a non-approved device to a  
Continental phone network would be considered illegal if not  
particularly immoral.

Two other things, call progress tones in many parts of Europe lack  
the precision of those from North American switches, so you may have  
to tell the modem to skip the dialtone check with, I believe, an  
ATXn.  Second, lots of German lines are configured to send "toll  
pulses" (Gebuehrenimpulse) to the set, typically to click a  
mechanical counter as billing units go by.  These pulses consist of  
short 14kHz tones at a whopping 10+ RMS Volts, a good order of  
magnitude stronger than your modem squawk.  Most Continental modems  
have a low-pass filter built-in to take care of this, but North  
American modems will drop connections like crazy on a line like  
this.  Not much you can do except construct your own filter or find  
another line that doesn't have Gebuehrenimpulse enabled.  Then again  
maybe the MWave firmware is "global" in the sense that  
low-pass-filtering is there already ... I don't have one, so I can't  
check.

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Tim Vetter    vfr@stm537.ubszh.net.ch (MIME, NEXTMAIL)
              tim.vetter@ubs.com    (ASCII, alternate)
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Forex & Fixed Income Trading Development
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