Dialing a modem

[Dr. Edward Warren]

Is it possible for me to write VB code in an Access module that would dial a
phone number through my modem? I need to make the phone number very long
with multiple pauses. I was hoping for a simple function that I could buy
or download.
Thank you,
Edward Warren
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Wayne Morgan]

You will find information on communicating with a serial port on Tony's
site:

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/serialport.htm

Once you communicate with the serial port, it is a matter of sending the AT
commands to the modem. While these vary from modem to modem, most of today's
modems will be the same when it comes to just dialing the phone line.

 

[Dr. Edward Warren]

Thank you,
I ordered the book they recommended. My needs are very simple. I need to
access my modem, get a dial tone, and send a long string of numbers as well
as anoccasional # or *. Is this already available in the API or in Visual
Basic? If so, where? I do not need to retrieve anything from the other end
of the line and I do not need to send or receive files. I just need to dial
a very long series of digits.
Thank you,
Edward Warren

 

[Wayne Morgan]

I have used the VB Comm Control before and it worked well for dialing, but
you have to have Visual Basic installed to add this control to a form. You
can then distribute the control with your Access database. I'm sure there
are API commands to do this, there are for just about everything, but I
don't know them. There is a dialer that you can use with Access, but I don't
know how flexible it will be for sending the dialing strings you're wanting
to send.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837146

 

[Dr. Edward Warren]

Thank you for the help. I got the book and read it. I then found
MSCOMM32.OCX on my computer and ran my Visual Basic 6.0
Professional Edition. I found a sample file for MSCOMM that had
most of the code I needed. I then adjusted it to do what I wanted.
The tricks included finding the right com port and ending every
string to the modem with a semi-colon so it expected more commands.
I then sent several hundred characters out, some inside a DoLoop,
and it ran well. I then found Form_Load and ran the adjusted SUB
as part of the startup. I then converted the whole thing to an EXE
file. It is invoked daily by my scheduler which shuts it all down after
5 minutes.
I have considered using something like this to harrass spammers, but for
the present I am just reporting them all. It isn't working very well.
Thank you for the help,
Edward Warren