I also remember text pagers from the 90's. They usually came with paging software that dialed a phone bank's modem and transmitted the message along with the pager's serial id. There was no universality; in other words, an AT&T pager could not receive messages by someone dialing into Southwest Bell's paging network.

Anyway, here's what you need to do: First, determine the protocol being used. You'll need to know stop bits, parity, data bits, as well as what the modem at the other end of the line is expecting with respect to pager ID's, message packets, etc. This info used to be available by googling (I think back then I used Lycos or Yahoo actually). I seem to remember something about TAP protocol. Maybe you can even search CPAN for a TAP module.

Once you know this info, open a serial connection to your modem. Talk to the modem just like we did in the old days with a terminal screen; ATDTxxxxxxxxxxxx for dialing the number, ATH to hang up, etc. Once connected, you'll have to talk to the serial connection with the system-specific information to send the page.

Opening the serial connection to your modem shouldn't be that difficult; there are plenty of modules that deal with serial devices, though some of them are OS dependant.

The hard part will just be deciphering what protocol the paging service expects. That will take some homework.

You may find it easier to just send the message as email through the pager's email gateway. Even back in the 90's, most alpha pagers had email addresses too.


Dave

In reply to Re: Send msg to pager through modem by davido
in thread Send msg to pager through modem by rhymejerky

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