Modem

[bagglo]

Modem,new problem, I did a search and read 250 post for three hours last night, and I still need help, I live in the rural country, I have a USR Sporster 33600 Model # 00084005 ISA hard modem, that will not connect at 33.6 I've tried thirty different drivers, before 1996 and after , and still ,I know my ISP is connectable at 33.6 that is what my computer connects at,the modem in question is for the granddaughters machine, I too have a USR hard Modem OEM type that connects at 33. tho mine is a 56k, and our "actual connect is a lot slower, tho I just check and at 5AM it is at 24.42, usually it is around 9.80 or less, so my question, will a 33.6 modem not connect at 33.6 and what "string" might I need to add, and there must be a driver that is better..I've downloaded all USR has,Fax, voice, PNP, etc, none will connect at 33.6...Thank you for any and all help!

[SARGE]

Check this out. Should at least whittle your possibles down a little.

http://www.geocities.com/sarge67us/USR.html

BTW, your telco line is probably in need of attention.

[glc]

I very rarely ever see a 33.6 modem connect at 33.6. Even on a good clean phone line, 28.8 is normally the best you will see - maybe 31.2 sometimes. Is your 56K connecting at 33600 or 33333? This is an important distinction - 33600 is a rare perfectly clean V.34 connection, where 33333 is a crappy V.90 connection, and with a rural phone line I would bet that it's the latter. A line that connects up at 33333 V.90 will probably support about a 24000 V.34 connection - maybe 26400 if you are lucky.

By the way, I am referring to the indicated connect speeds shown by dialup networking in Win9x.

[bagglo]

Sarge, I am in agh!!! My printer has not stopped for 15 minutes and I have not had time to digest all this information..Thank you!! Never knew all this info availiable within ones own computer..Thank you, I'll report back soon as I figure all this out!!

glc, my machine say in the lower right corner,start menu,@33600 and my net monitor says connect speed 33.60Kb and I just ran true speed and it says 29.33kb and that is hard for me to beleive ,now granddaughter machine with the 33.6 USR moden say @9600 bps and true speed is 7.65kb, both lines are in my office..I am going to run Sarges info and see what I get, I did have a better connection speed eariler today, but with a different driver..Thank you both,I'll be back...

[glc]

Okay - now this is starting to make some sense. Is the 33.6 a hardware modem hardjumpered to a com port, or an external? If so, you need to go into device manager and adjust the settings on its com port - make them 115200, 8, none, 1, hardware. You also need to determine the exact model and get the right driver from USR's site.

Note that if this IS an external modem - or a Winmodem - and the machine is older than about a Pentium 100, you can't do much with it because the onboard com ports on old machines have an 8250 UART chip which is limited to about 9600. Winmodems do not connect well at all on older less powerful machines. The best modem for an old machine is a 100% hardware based internal ISA modem, and USR is one of the best as long as it's a Sportster NON-Winmodem with hardware jumpers.

[bagglo]

glc,the old computer I am fixing for the granddaughter is Pent 166,the modem is a USR Sporster 33600 #00084005, it is an ISA slotted card, and for drivers I've not found a specific one for that model at USR website just groups made before and after 1996, I've tried then all , I am now using the one that says USR Sportster 33600 Fax PC, and it does not connect consistanly at the same speed, like mine does,this morning, its been at 9600 and now at 12200,from Sarge's info the line I have that machine on is NOT as clean as the line I have my machine on,so maybe that is as good as it gets,my granddaughter lives 50 miles away and in towm so maybe she'll get better line quality there, I did download a "modem booster" yesterday to my machine, that I was thinking of putting on her machine,but I hate that kind of programs ,they usually cause more problems that they fix , but it seems to have boosted my speeds two fold, this A.M. it says 26.51kb for "true speed" and I never get that kind of data transfer usually between 8-12 kb...you referred to harware jumpers on this modem, I'm not sure what they look like and can I do something with them, to make this card faster?? Thank you for all the help!

[glc]

If you pull the modem out of the machine, you will see 2 jumper blocks on it - one is for port assignment and the other is for IRQ. The chart is printed on the backside of the card. You can either hardjumper the modem to a specific port and IRQ (recommended) or remove all jumpers for plug and play.

Boot into safe mode and remove ALL modems and com ports from device manager. Shut down and rejumper the modem for COM 2 IRQ 3. Go into the bios and DISABLE the second serial port (Com2, Serial B, UART2, however it's named) and make sure the first Com port is set to 3F8/IRQ4 (Com 1). Restart into Windows and Windows should install TWO com ports - Com 1 and Com 2. Go into the properties of Com 2 and set them to 115200, 8, none, 1, hardware. Go into c:\windows\inf\other and remove any INF file that says anything about 3Com or USR. Now, run the add new modem wizard and Windows should detect a modem on Com 2. If it says it's a 33.6 USR, accept it. If it says its a standard modem, change that, use Have Disk and show it the USR .inf file, and choose the correct one from the list it comes up with.