UKH

Ah, the joys of lockdown!

I need to send some test faxes to a test machine somewhere. Our standard test machines are in lockdown and we can't get access to them for the foreseeable future.

Does anyone have access to a fax machine that we could send a few tests to, please?
We just need to confirm receipt and format.
Phil

you can probably use an online service like efax to send a PDF to a fax. may have a free trial

we binned physical fax machines 10 years ago and binned our efax subscription 2 years ago due to lack of use! the last customer that we were sending faxes to, who were adamant that they only supported faxes were, it turned out, converting them to PDF and mailing them internally. So we cut out the middle-man and pulled the plug on it as we were generating PDFs to send as the fax in the first place...

Yes 01463234036, I don't know if it still works though and the ink may have dried up. Feel free to try though. 

Needs to be a hardware-based machine unfortunately. We've looked at that option quite extensively and if it's software-based we can't guarantee the signalling would match UK requirements because there is a possibility that the site would be based elsewhere and any kind of translation could be at play.

Thanks anyhow!

Thanks Roger! - Fax sent

Sadly although it was received my ink must have dried up so the page is blank

No worries (it shouldn't be blank!). Thanks for trying!

I hope you find someone else with vintage kit

there will be someone, somewhere!

anyone?

Search for a chain called Ryman 

<sarcasm>Wow! Never thought of that. Very constructive.<\sarcasm>

How soon do you need this doing? If it's not urgent urgent I can get one working for you.  Why not ask a local hotel, they won't be doing anything else.

PS you should move away from fax, because faxes don't like voice over IP comms and the world is moving to VoIP.  I appreciate that they contitute a written document in legal terms, but there has to be an alternative.

My office will be open at 10, I will ask the question to see if we still have a fax and send you the number if we do. 

It's tickling the back of my brain that one of our printers can accept a fax but it's been that many years since we sent or received one I'm not sure. 

We have one with ink etc, I've emailed you with the number if you still need it

Jason

Fax working. Paper version. 

Thanks for your help, Steve!

and thank you to everyone who’s offered help. 

as for “you shouldn’t be using fax”... well some things just are, and it’s best not to question them!

stay safe everyone!

phil

https://www.ryman.co.uk/services/fax

Your call. They don't just sell office equipment all their shops have fax services, I think they might even do it online too. 

Until very recently the NHS was a big fax user. I wonder how many are left?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/health-and-social-care-secretary-bans-fa...

I bet without a national integrated IT system, quite a few. 

It's not that simple - the possibility that they 'may do it online' means it's not a go-er; that's why the OP requested a fax machine (should have said hardware-based for clarity I suppose).

Please understand that due to the system requirements, the initial level of testing has to be to physical machines and not online services; we can relax it after the initial tests, and we'll do that by taking out a subscription to an online provider.

Before I made the ask yesterday, I had called a number of bureau (couldn't guarantee it would be hardware receiving but happy to charge), hotels (skeleton staff/too busy/online only), accountants (all closed) and other establishments, all with no luck. Putting a post on UKC was a kinda last ditch effort.

Didn't mean to snap yesterday - all very frustrating trying to key in with legacy equipment.

I bet it wouldn't be hard to track one down, but I'd never make that call - they have better things to be getting along with!

I didn't mean for this, just in response to the questioners who asked 'who uses fax?'

the particular job I’m involved with here make extensive use of them for sure!

Check with the office, apparently the main printer died last year and I signed off on a new one that doesn't have fax capability, also apparently my office manager specifically mentioned this point just in case it became a problem down the line. 

Sorry sir. 

Thanks for trying!

It is - for me.

No worries!

Phil

I'm still totally baffled by the need for this now. Surely one of the simplest modern solutions is to buy your own webspace, not very expensive, and then upload your pdfs into that? You could then upload them into a file deeply embedded into that webspace, e.g. www.yourwebspaceurl/misc/latest recipes/. That folder would then be password-protected (a password you could update as frequently as you like). They would already know the password or, if you're really paranoid, you could make a unique password for any latest file, and put a password hint at the top of that partic webpage, e.g, if you're communicating with an experienced climber, it might say something like 'surname of climber who did famous "suicidal" first ascent in the Ogwen valley in late 1940s, plus year of the ascent'. As soon as he/she's downloaded it, you can then delete it from the webspace, but you could already have it saved in some encrypted way, for ever?, eg. on Dropbox.

I'm just trying to give you the general drift of the modus operandi I'm working towards now. The thing is that what I've suggested requires no new technical competence on the part of the receiver.

PS. for extreme security you could convert you pdfs to jpgs before you upload them.

In this scenario, the design says fax, and so fax it is. Some things don’t need to change.

Is this now sorted? 

I have a fax  and land line 

Ok, I'll shut up.

Something else about about this thread, not to do with you, is just so funny in a rather appalling, sick kind of way.

If you need to convert pdf to fax there just seems to be so much available and free on line, plus software that you can download on to your computer, that I'm not quite sure why you're asking.