sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Software to capture reports from RS232

Greetings,
I'm looking for a small (aka inexpensive) software application that will essentially replace an Okidata Serial printer. The PBX in question (Executone IDS) will print nicely formatted management/ACD reports designed to be captured on a serial printer. I would like to capture it to a text file instead. I've found lots of software that will capture/log serial traffic, however they don't don't handle the formatting correctly - for example, instead of acting on a line feed, they will record a character that represents a line feed. So the resulting file has all of the raw info, but must be manually reformatted. The only success I've had is Procomm capturing - but not quite as flexible as I'd like. Ideas welcome.
Mike

We have always just used Terminal or Hyperterminal and capture the serial data to a .TXT file. I never even thought about any limitations since the customers haven't ever complained. Can't those parameters be adjusted in these Windows programs?

Hyperterminal did not retain the formatting. These reports print daily and are probably 15 pages in length. They just want to copy/paste/email instead of distributing paper. I don't want the customer to babysit the software or reformat each report...
Mike

We're checking out Comm One's One Call Accounting Lite (about $300)...It may be worth looking into.

I'm still testing it, so I can't really give an opinon yet.

Yeah, my boss acquired comm one call accounting software off of ebay for only a few bucks. It works out O.K. There are better programs out there, but comm one is by far the cheapest and it does have the text formatted correctly for what little format there is on an Avaya Partner ACS SMDR report. Have had it running for over a year now. Might contact the company and poke around with a few questions. Another option, not necessarily cheaper by any means, is a company that sells a service called "call cruncher". They hookup to your SMDR port via a converter to an internet connection and your call accounting is available on secured web page from virtually anywhere with internet access. But you get into that and you have monthly fees and the like to consider as well. Hope you find what you are looking for, and if it is something good please share your results.

See if you can find a copy of the DOS version of Telix. I used Telix 3.15 way back in the day for calling BBS systems and it captured what was coming over the modem perfectly.

You shouldn't have that problem with Procomm.

Is it possible that you have the PBX set to "Print to File" instead of to a printer? Also, in Hyperterminal, try fiddling with the "Terminal" setting and/or the ASCII setup.