When I moved the CentOS desktop from one place to another, I forgot how to setup the fax machine or exactly how you should connect the cables to make the fax machine work. When I moved the desktop, I had it like this…phone line -> answering machine -> HP 5610, which works as far as the phone is concerned, fax does not work though. So how did I know the fax doesn’t work without calling a friend to send and received faxes? Simple, use the power of the internet.

The CentOS desktop is powered by a very old Athlon XP processor with 1GB of DDR ram and my fax machine is HP’s 5610 All-In-One. To get your 5610′s fax to work the connection has to be in this order phone line -> HP 5610 -> answering machine. At least that’s how I did it. Now comes the fun part…testing if you can send and receive faxes. To do this test I head over to a couple of websites.

HP Fax Products (1-888-473-2963) – Since I have an HP 5610, I figured out that this should do the trick though I don’t know if it’ll work if yours isn’t an HP brand. this website does both sending and receiving of faxes.

Fax Toys (1-510-545-0990) – This has got to be the coolest (send only) fax test website ever! They’ll display whatever you sent to them in their website! As soon as you sent your fax to their number, head over to their website and check!

Interpage Network Services – This test service only test if you can receive a fax from them.

Fax Zero – This website is more like a free fax service instead of a free fax testing service website. Nevertheless, you can still test your fax machine if it can receive fax messages.