> I think I may have misunderstood you earlier. Your father is using a > different computer with a different modem?
Yes. Different computer, different modem, different operating system, phone socket in a different room. > I don't really see why your modem going off-hook should have killed > his connection. Do you have his modem connected to the "phone" > socket on your modem? No. The house is wired so there are connections to the phone-line both downstairs and upstairs. Why does pon kill his connection? Well because pon merrily walses in, spewing out phone numbers and other noise onto the line. Presumably this confuses the heck out of my father's computer causing his link to go down. (Incidently, the same happens to me when my father tries to connect while I have a ppp link running.) What I was thinking of is writing a script which will output the activity of the phoneline to my speaker for a few seconds, without actually putting anything on there, so I can check whether my father's connected without disrupting him. If there's an even neater way to do this I'd love to hear it, but this way would be much better than my present situation. Cheers, Mark. _/~~~~~~~~\___/~~~~~~\____________________________________________________ ____/~~\_____/~~\__/~~\__________________________Mark_Phillips____________ ____/~~\_____/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ____/~~\HE___/~~\__/~~\APTAIN_____________________________________________ ____/~~\______/~~~~~~\____________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"