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> I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find. Two poten
by II2II 2y ago
> I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find.
Two potential problems. I have tried serial transfers on a similar vintage of Mac, and it seems to require a USB/Serial adapter that supports proper RS-232 logic levels. Many (perhaps most) don't. I ended up using the built-in serial port on an older PC. The second issue is that you require software on the Mac side to perform the data transfer. Something like the rather common ClarisWorks would do the job, but the presence of Word and PowerPoint suggests they didn't have ClarisWorks. (Even if it did have ClarisWorks, they would need to know that ClarisWorks includes built-in communications software. It isn't exactly a common component in office suites.)
I suppose they could have explored AppleTalk, print drivers, or (depending on the version of MacOS) TCP/IP. Each option is limited though. AppleTalk requires another suitably equipped Mac or a PC with rare hardware and ancient software. (I think Sun systems would work too, but then we are really getting into the weeds.) I'm pretty sure the Mac print drivers rasterize the text, so you would still have to undo that. (Though it would probably transfer the data faster.) I think TCP/IP only shipped with MacOS 7.5 and later, would have required setup on another PC, and would still be convoluted (e.g. downloading FTP software to the Mac, so it could upload to a PC).
It's going to be a tricky situation.