Modems Internal vs external

[highrisemech]

Ive seen a lot of people here advocate that external modems are better than internal but according to what I am reading in A+ Certification buy Mike Myers says the contrary I will paraphrase......

quote:
"External modems only convert analog to digital and back,because they are connected to COM ports that handle the job of converting the serial data bits into the 8 bit-wide data the cpu needs. Internal modems come with thier own Com port that handles the whole process". end quote.

Then the book depicts a picture of an internal modem with its own UART chip.
Then it shows a picture of an external modem and under the picture it says "an external modem has no UART. It uses a serial ports UART.




I'm not looking to start an arguement just asking and trying to clear up some confusion through this thread.

[mattg2k4]

While I'm not clear either on the particulars of data transmission (I have the same A+ book btw) the only reason I can think of for getting an external modem as opposed to internal is so it could be used on multiple computers, or used with a router.

And there are hardly any routers that support ext. dial-up modems, which use the com ports, and why would anyone want to share already slow dial-up anyway?

[glc]

What Mike says is totally correct, but also meaningless. A UART is a UART and it doesn't matter a whit whether it's on the modem or on the motherboard. The reason to get an external serial modem is to take advantage of the COM port you already have, and to ensure you have a fully hardware controlled modem instead of a software controlled modem that uses system resources to do its work. The closest thing you are going to get to an external serial modem in capability and performance (and ease of configuration) is an old-fashioned ISA bus modem which has jumpers to set the com port and IRQ - which I happen to have one of and won't give it up for the world.

[highrisemech]

Thanks for that analogy GLC what you are saying saying makes sence.

[piasabird]

If you really want speed use a full modem and not a winmodem. Of course they cost more.

[reboot]

While I won't rant about the crap that Mike spits out, knowing only half...anyhow to misquote someone, "get your facts straight, then distort them at your leisure", is exactly what he's done.

I also have a superb Diamond/Rockwell with jumpers, and although I have no cause to use it, I'll never part with it...just in case

[casey]

How much resources do winmodems use ? does it matter on 1gig and better systems ?I have followed the modem threads for the last 9 months and find it quite interesting. I use Lucent Chipset winmodems on almost all of my builds & always get download speeds of 46000 to 52000. Impossible to find PCI hardware modems over here and externals ie: USR cost almost US$100 !!

[Tuf]

On decent phone lines i think it's hard to beat a good Lucent winmodem. I have an old Lucent 56k V.90 winmodem that will outrun either of my Supra's. A good hardware based modem does offer more stability if you need it. But if your phone lines are good and you don't have an ISA slot you'll won't be giving up anything.

[reboot]

With system speeds increasing, and RAM so cheap, a winmodem will usually work as good, or better, than any other, especially the Lucent chipset ones.
If there is ANY question about phone line quality, one of the better hard modems will run circles around a winmodem.
In one part of town, all my customers run cheap Lucents, with speeds ranging from 48 to 52k. If I put the same modem in a machine for a different part of town, 26.4 is the max. Put in a generic Rockwell hard modem, and it's up to 48k. Chipset seems to have nothing to do with it, and this is for various ISP's as well, as I've tried USR/TI, Rockwell/Conexant, CirrusLogic/Intel, and Lucent, both winmodems and hard modems.

[Tuf]

I'm not a fan of winmodems other than the ones with Lucent chipsets. The drivers are universal. They are very easy to set up. The modems can be had cheap enough. But you do need to have good phone lines.

[piasabird]

How fast you expect a modem to go anyway?

Modems are about the slowest hardware devices.

Internal modems tend to be winmodems and use up your CPU resources. That is probably a bigger problem.

[piasabird]

they make external modems that use USB also!

[glc]

Yes, and USB modems suck up resources just like winmodems.

[reboot]

Then there's the worst of the worst, a USB Winmodem.
Yes they're out there.