FO2081 & Credit card machine

[weaponx2121]

I have a customer who has one fax line.. they use to have an old toshiba fax (170 maybe) that had line 1 and a line 2.. The fo2081 has line and tele. credit card machine was connected to the old machine was hooked up to the the fax thru line 2 and worked fine.. is there a work around to get the credit card machine to work with the FO2081?? i would of thought plugging it into the tele plug would make it work?? Could they use a splitter to get it to work?? or would the signal be split and the credit card machine might try and answer??

[Akitu]

I have a customer who has one fax line.. they use to have an old toshiba fax (170 maybe) that had line 1 and a line 2.. The fo2081 has line and tele. credit card machine was connected to the old machine was hooked up to the the fax thru line 2 and worked fine.. is there a work around to get the credit card machine to work with the FO2081?? i would of thought plugging it into the tele plug would make it work?? Could they use a splitter to get it to work?? or would the signal be split and the credit card machine might try and answer??

The best thing they could possibly do is to get a splitter and pay the phone company a little extra for a distinctive ring pattern, then program the 2081 to detect the distinctive ring. The debit machine would only try to answer the line if the 2081 could not for whatever reason. The tel slot is only for handset receivers.

[MHeon71]

As stupid as it sounds, check to see if you have a 2 pin phone line and not a 4 pin phone line. A co worker resolved an issue with a Sharp copier fax option by changing to 2 pin phone line. Of course, he could not receive faxes with his problem when daisy chained with the credit card terminal, but maybe your issue is similar. It is a cheap test and solution.

[oldschool]

I'd add a second line or upgrade the credit card machine to one that uses a network connection rather than dial up. This will avoid finger pointing if one device has an issue.
Having said that we had a similar issue with an older credit card machine. The credit card machine would never get an incoming call and was only used sparsely throughout the day. We connected the credit card machine to the "Tel" connection of the MFP and it was understood that you could not run a credit card and send a fax at the same time. It was only temporary so adding a second line wasn't cost effective.

If the old line wasn't analog then check the phone line cables as MHeon71 mentioned. If there are 4 conductors you'll need a new cable with only 2 conductors in the jack.

[Akitu]

The networked credit card machine is another great idea. What I suggested wasn't exactly adding a second line, it's a cheaper half assed way to get a ring pattern for a fax line. Most phone companies won't charge an arm and a leg for DRP as opposed to a whole other phone line.

[oldschool]

For our setup we didn't need a different ring pattern as the credit card machine was set to never answer an incoming call. It worked for a while with only a few times that a fax came in while someone was trying to run a credit card. If the credit card machine is heavily used and they receive/send a large volume of faxes, this may not be the best solution for them.

Even if they do go the route of getting a new credit card machine, You still may need to change the phone cable. This is needed if the old phone used a digital phone line rather than an analog line.