Before the storm.

I suppose I could buy a solid satate answerphonre for the phoneline, perhaps it is impossible- if not worthless trying to get my PC to be an answerphone/fazx centre as it isnt on the voice phone line>

Tradesman, correct, to send/receive faxes *directly* it would need a modem and phoneline connected. There are various 3rd party products that work over an internet connection for sending/receiving via a gateway service, take a look at www.efax.com as an example, or ask your ISP, quite a few offer this now.

thanks, kinda nice to have received emails in storage with answerphone messages.

oh well

Tradesman, modems are very cheap these days...

so if I add a 'normal' 56k modem to the phone line part of the adsl connection I could use it as a pc/answerphone.

Well yes, although you would need a "voice" modem and software to go with it (which most of the time is supplied with the modem). Also, bear in mind that you would not get anywhere near 56K on a telephone line with ADSL. The ADSL carrier signal degrades the line so that you will get perhaps 40-45K at best.

I want to set up an Apache Web Server which I have never done before. Can anybody give me some help when I get started?

Croc,

On what operating system? windows/linux/freeBSD?

Ive been installing/configuring/maintaining apache on linux systems for about 4 years now and may be able to help...

Email me: jonathan@moneyam.com

J.

Kayak,

As I would be only using the voice modem as a fax answerphone on the voice phone line ( not the USB data internet line) does this mean it would degrade the ADSL data performance to 45k??

from my memory faxes are only transmitted at about 9k any way. I would like them so i have a digital store of faxes i receive/send.

tullettj
Win XP Pro
I have downloaded the latest version, Do I need to register a new domain name with the current IP address first ?
I can access the hello screen via a remote pc using the IP address so I assume I have some sort of basic web server running.
Many Thanks D
And will EMail you!

Tradesman, no, I meant that if you ran the modem as a modem you would only get 40-45k (even without ADSL you would have to have a very good line to reach 50k, and 56k you would never see in practice). If you use the modem just for voice then you would not notice any difference. The ADSL will run at 512k or whatever, as normal.

Faxes are sent by using the modem as a modem but the maximum speed there is either 9.6k or 19.2k depending on how new the fax machine at the other end is.

Of course it is a good idea to have a modem backup to your ADSL line anyway, since I'm sure you don't expect 100% uptime from ADSL :-)

great advice kayak thanks.

good luck with your trading

Crocodile,

No, dont need a *new* domain name, you could set up something like:
http://home.crocsoft.com/ to point to your ADSL static IP (if that is the kind of thing you are looking to do.)

Are you doing this for fun, or is there more serious intentions here, if so, and if security is an issue, I wouldnt run it on Windows.

J.

tullettj
A bit of both but mainly to learn and set up a couple of my customers web sites on it as a back up. Also web cab streaming which is crap using FTP up to the ISP.
So how do you point
http://home.crocsoft.com/
To the static IP ?

Re security it will be run on a seperate server with Broadband so no really imortant information to lose.

And thanks very much for your help
D,

Crocodile,

You need to ask the people that host your domain (dollarhost.com?) to add the record to your domain. There may be a charge for this...

J.

Normally I buy my new machines from Dell, but I was thinking maybe of building one myself and getting some satisfaction out of it. My build knowledge is at the level of swapping hard discs around, putting new video cards in , controller cards etc. Any tips, hints?

And is it worth building your own or is it cheaper for Dell to build in bulk? and where is a good place (plaice?) to look for the bits?

Fish,

All I had done before I built mine (last Oct) was swap over graphics cards! I felt that I could build a m/c exactly to my spec for trading without all of the additional stuff that comes preloaded these days. Also I didn't need flash speakers, expensive sound cards/graphics. I found these sites particularly helpful :-

Buying stuff
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/k.asp?ck=1&r=1
http://www.dabs.com/home.asp
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
http://www.crucial.com/uk/index.asp

Reviews
http://www17.tomshardware.com
http://www.motherboards.org/

Price Comparisons
http://www.computerprices.co.uk/hardware/pricebrowser.asp


That lot should keep you going! Let us know what you decide to do and ask if you want any other info.

Regards
Rob

"To find out how fast your processor is, while in Win98:-

From a click on the Start button, go to
Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information
Click on 'Tools'
Select 'Windows Report Tool'
Click on the blue 'Change System File Selections' towards the bottom of the window. This will perform a short scan of your system files

Your processor speed and other information will then show up."

Q. Can you do this with WinXP?

Apparently, you can access this facility direct by executing WINREP.EXE

Q. Can you do this with WinXP?

Rob, thanks I'll check out the sites. There some stuff on the web about build your own, and it doesn't look too difficult. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dell can build them cheaper than I can.

Fish

The thing I found was that by the time you've built it its out of date! There's always something faster bigger better but I went from PIII 600 to 2gig processor so the difference to me was plenty. You may well be right about Dell and I can certainly say I had no complaints about the m/c or service I rec'd from them on my first m/c.

Regards
Rob