Unable to connect through ***

[LOTL]

I was just at an Office Building this evening, and they have 7 PC's
connected through an Analog *** system.
Don't know much about the phone system, but 5 of the 7 PC's are unable to
connect through a shared AOL account using a shared dialup connection
(archaic i know).
They keep getting a "No dial tone error" when trying to connect through
AOL's dialer. I checked the modem properties on all PC's and ran diagnostics
on all of them, and they all seem to check out fine.
There were some init strings on a few of the PC's and i tried deleting them
and still the same results.
On a couple of the PC's there was a constant beeping noise along with the
dialtone on the line when i hooked up one of the *** phones to listen for
dialtone. I was able to dial out, and the phone seemed to work o.k. I also tried connecting on the line that the phone was plugged into that didn't have the beeping noise and still got the no dial tone error.
Im kinda stumped here. I talked to the Communications company who installed
the phone system, and he said it has to be the PC's. I argued with him for a
little bit, and told him i would be taking one of the systems home to test.
Well i plugged in my phone cable here at home and connected to AOL and my
Dialup ISP with no trouble.
The Communications company is going to be sending someone out to check the
wiring again, and had already been out at the request of the office manager,
and they had told her nothing was wrong and that the modems all must have
been bad on the 5 PC's.
My thinking is that on the 2 PC's that work they both have modems that are
different from all the others.
It may be that those two aren't as susceptible to what ever is going on with
the phone system, where as the other 5 are. There may very well be a
different init string that may solve the problem but???
I would think that there would be an easy way to just bypass the *** with
the line that they are using for internet access, and just feed the jacks
for the 7 PC's directly.
I was thinking of having them tell the Communications company to just bypass the phone system and see if it works.
Any thoughts anyone?

[BipolarBill]

Set the modem properties so that they do not wait for a dial tone.

When configuring the number, put a 9 and a few commas before the number:

9,,,,555-555-1212

The commas are pauses and delay connection until the outside dial-tone is clear.

[Midknyte]

The *** lines as I understand it are in a pool. When a signal comes back to the main line, it can sometimes get sent to another phone if the line is found to be busy. That's what happens at our office. If someone doesn't answer, the signal gets bounced to someone else. This might not be true, but it seems logical.

Why don't they just get DSL or cable? If it's a business, the line will pay for itself in no time. How much $$ is wasted while employees are waiting for webpages to load up?

[LOTL]

Thanks for the replies guys, and ill try the comma's and see if it helps.
Yes the first thing i asked is why don't you get DSL, and explained that if they were able to get a Home account, that it would only be another $6 on top of what they were paying for AOL.
I guess when they moved into the new office space they couldn't afford to run CAT5, and opted to just use the existing phone wiring.
I may be able to convince them to do the wiring job if they can get Verizon to go for the $29.95 pr/month deal.
Im not sure if its a mess i want to get into with the mixture of older Win95 and 98 machines, no budget for upgrades etc.

[Midknyte]

No budget? I heard that one before. Talk to them about the man-hours they are wasting because of dialup. wages*hours=wasted money. An investment into cabling, a router, and DSL would pay for itself in a few months. Penny Wise, Pound Foolish. I guess that would be Penny Wise, Dollar Foolish, but you know what I mean.