초록 ▼

An intelligent pay telephone provides local/remote diagnostics, fraudulent call prevention, capability of facilitating local coin overtime operation, complete cash box accounting, and call detail reporting. Information regarding each call placed from the telephone is recorded and is useful in verify

An intelligent pay telephone provides local/remote diagnostics, fraudulent call prevention, capability of facilitating local coin overtime operation, complete cash box accounting, and call detail reporting. Information regarding each call placed from the telephone is recorded and is useful in verifying operator service provider communications, long distance bills, local measured usage charges, and call volume discounts, by way of example. The intelligent pay telephone includes a delta-sigma voice driver for reducing circuit complexity and improving circuit reliability, and a one-wire, high speed communication controller facilitates high speed downloading and uploading of pay telephone data, records, and operating program code. The pay telephone also includes a low impedance, low power hookswitch for resisting damage from weather, as well as a pin fraud prevention circuit for deterring fraud. Battery management techniques, memory management, and coin detection circuits add to the pay telephone intelligence and serve to improve system reliability. And, firmware security techniques and operating system formats promote product firmware security and configuration control.

대표청구항 ▼

[ That which is claimed is:] [1.]1. An intelligent public telephone comprising:an operating system including an application specific integrated circuit operable with a microprocessor;a delta-sigma modulator circuit integrated into the application specific integrated circuit for simplifying audio fun

[ That which is claimed is:] [1.]1. An intelligent public telephone comprising:an operating system including an application specific integrated circuit operable with a microprocessor;a delta-sigma modulator circuit integrated into the application specific integrated circuit for simplifying audio functionality thereby improving product reliability;a high-speed, bi-directional, one-wire master controller integrated into the application specific integrated circuit for facilitating serial communication with a telephone operating device selected from the group consisting of a resident electronic serial number device, custom integrated circuits operable therewith, product option cards, and a multi-functional product interconnect port;a low power, low impedance hookswitch control circuit integrated into the application specific integrated circuit for improving the affects of intruding water that can cause a false hookswitch indication;a programmable coin debounce and detection circuit integrated into the application specific integrated circuit;secured memory page-swapping means for a 64 kbyte direct address system integrated into the application specific integrated circuit;battery diagnostic means operable with a battery of the operating system, the battery diagnostic means communicating with the microprocessor for providing a signal thereto indicative of battery capacity while maintaining the battery transparent to operation of the telephone;pin fraud prevention circuitry communicating with the microprocessor and handset for permitting operation of the public telephone upon an enabling signal therefrom to improve product robustness for minimizing potential fraud; andfirmware security means for providing firmware security and configuration control of the operating system, and for facilitating flexibility in managing the configuration control.