________  ________  ________
   2018-09-26                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   So  I  picked  up  a couple  of answering  /        _/         /         /
machines  to add  to my rapidly growing pile  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
of non-Touchphone phone stuff  and the first    /        \/        \/    /   \
one,  a  Voca AT-551 arrived  yesterday and,   /        _/         /_       _/
wow,  I  was  expecting this  to  be  pretty  /-        /        _/         /
straight forward  but without a  manual  I'm  \________/\________/\___/____/
completely  lost.  The settings are  all  so
cryptic  and the unit  just throws equally cryptic errors at  me constantly. I
found a quick-reference guide for the next model down, the AT-550 which hasn't
been  much help unfortunately. The settings  were entered a little differently
between the two models and there's not much overlap.

   However I am patient  and curious so here's what settings I've  managed  to
sleuth out so far:

   P.1 This is  the setting  the time. Select P. 1 then press ENTER, select
       from 1 to 7 for the day of the week (I have no idea yet whether 1 is
       Sunday or Monday because I get a tape  error when  I try to playback
       the time). Hit ENTER  again and you can select from 0 to 23  for the
       hour of the day then ENTER once more to set the minutes and ENTER to
       finish.

   P.2 Lets  you select a number  from 0 to  9 three times,  pressing ENTER
       between each  selection. I believe  this sets the  PIN to check your
       messages remotely.

   P.3 Lets you  select a number between  1 and 9 and then a  second number
       between 0  and  9, pressing  ENTER  between  each selection and then
       ENTER  to confirm. My best guess is this is the seconds or number of
       rings before the machine answers a call but I  haven't been able  to
       test yet.

   P.4 You can select from 0 to 9, a degrees symbol, P, L or E. So far I've
       learned  that  if I  select 0-9  and  press ENTER  I  can just  keep
       selecting  numbers until I  select E, so  I surmise that E  ends the
       input. It's entering in  some kind of numeric string so maybe it's a
       phone number? It does have a paging facility so this could likely be
       setting  the  phone  number  or  pager number that it  pages when  a
       message is received.

       After writing this all  out for  this  phlog and thinking about what
       other settings are available on the  device, I'm pretty certain this
       has to  be the paging  number, otherwise there's no other way to set
       it  that I can  see. As for the degrees symbol, P and  L options - I
       have no idea.

   These last two settings are the real fuckin' mysteries:

   P.5 Two selections here, from 1 to 9 and then from 1 to 3, ENTER between
       and ENTER  to confirm.  The second option may vary depending  on the
       first option but I haven't checked all 9 yet so can't say. I have no
       idea what this could be.

   P.6 Options are 0 or 1 with ENTER to confirm. Emphatic shrug.

   So how are y'all with puzzles? Hahaha.



EOF