[geeks] Manipulating a modem

[Sheldon T. Hall]

I know modems are impossibly last-century, and I don't propose to use one
for actual communications, I just want to use it as an automatic dialer.

We're being overwhelmed by telephone robo-calls.  If it's not "Jake" calling
about "Your Windows Computer" it's "Rachel" from "Card Services."  We get
several calls a day, and, worse, we get them all night, too.

I'd settle for blocking the middle-of-the-night calls, at least for now.

The phone company, Qwest, offers various discouragements, but they seem
pretty porous.

So, I thought I'd just forward all calls between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM to my
Google number.  The phone company lets us do that, but it's a fairly
involved sequence of phone-pad number-punching.  I'd like to automate that.
I figure a couple of scripts to the the number-punching and a cron job would
do it.

I've got a Linux (Ubuntu 10.04) fileserver that runs all the time, the
chassis has an open slot, I've got a couple of old modems (internal and
external), and decent, if rusty, Shell script programming skills.

What I don't know is how to "talk" to the modem from a Shell script.

Clues, sample code, or offers to do it all for me appreciated.

Thanks.

-Shel