looking for some freeware software

[Bob]

Basically, I'm looking for a piece of software that can use my modem as a telephone...
Since I switched to a broadband connection, my 56k modem has lain redundant in the back of my PC.
The problem I have, is that the nearest telephone is across a room, down a two-turn flight of stairs, a 90 degree turn and into another room - potentially having to open the door and put the light on. Obviously very awkward when playing an internet game - ever tried pausing War3 and finding it still paused when you come back?
So what I want to do, is use the modem to hook into the phoneline, have some sort of audible alert when I'm rung, be able to just hit F2 or something to answer, and use the microphone / speakers in my PC as a telephone. So it has to be able to run in the background behind War3 of the like. A similar piece of software came with my first modem, but a)I could never get it to work B)I can't remember what it was called c)I don't have to disk anymore d)I'm pretty sure it didn't do exactly what I want anyway.

So, do any lurkers know of a piece of free software (freeware, GNU, whatever) that will let me do this?

Search engines are rather useless as far as I can tell, mostly just because I don't know what to call this kind of thing - searching 'modem' brings up pages and pages of drivers.

Thanks in Advance

-Bob

[channel1]

I checked a number of times over the last few years, and never found any freebies that worked well.

BVRP has stuff that costs $ at http://www.bvrp.com/, I use their basic PhoneTools for Fax.

I did a quickie check now for stuff for my old SatidFAXion, Intel sold it to PureData some years ago, and PureData seems to have gone over to IP telephony products.

If you know the manufacturer of the modem, you'll have better luck checking the manufacturer's website. Telephony software is usually included with new modems, and they may have current versions available for download.

-rcv-