[DouglasKC]

That’s how dial-up works. If you are on the phone, people calling you get either 1) a busy signal, 2) voice mail or 3) a ringing tone awaiting your call-waiting reply. If you are on a dial-up modem and your phone has call-waiting, you get a “beep” that causes your modem to drop the carrier. Your phone can’t ring in any of the cases if you are on the line, hence the poster is a dummy.

Not necessarily. On some modems you could tweak a register so that if you had call waiting it wouldn't drop carrier. So somebody *could* be calling and having it ring and ring.

[the invisib1e hand]

On some modems you could tweak a register so that if you had call waiting it wouldn't drop carrier.

Ahh, yes, the tweaking-of-the-register. Are you sure you want to open that can of worms here?

[Cyber Liberty]

It comes down to, “Only one call can be on the line at once.” Even Oliver Douglas understood that, hanging from the top of his telephone pole.