C
casey.o
While I would have given more thought to this elctrical problem, you
know that I have the same problem with Win2K as I do with XP. And Win2K
is on the same computer (dual booted), as Win98. Same modem, same phone
line, same serial cable and port, etc. Hell, even the same harddrive but
2K is on partition D:. I really think the drivers just dont work on NT
Windows. And I'm running all Fat32 partitions, even though I doubt that
matters.
Getting better performance using the generic driver (part of XP), that
comes with XP, and using the one for 33K, rather than the 56K one, and
not the one with v.90 or v.92, worked MUCH better yesterday. I stayed
online for 11 hours, downloaded about 50 megs of programs, and went to
many websites. After that 11 hours, I began getting errors such as
"page not found" (for google). Either way, this was a huge improvenment
over the failure to transfer data after 3 minutes, and disconnect at
around 15 to 20 min I was getting with the driver MADE for the modem
(the same one I use in Win98). That pretty much tells me that the
driver is not compatible with the Windows NT types (2K and XP).
If it was just Init strings, I could experiment, but there are so damn
many settings that it seems just like a needle in a haystack. I dont
even know what half the stuff means, but there's 8-N-1, TCP/IP, Carrier,
Hardware and/or software flow control. compression on/off, some network
settings that effect the modem too, and the speed such as 56K or 33K,
and on topd of that is the v.90 v.92, and that's just a drop in the
bucket compared to all the other settings. Then I have to make sure I
am using the right port, and adjust the port speed, etc..... It never
ends....
If I knew all this other stuff was set correctly, and knew the driver
was cooperating with XP or 2K, I might experiment with Init strings some
more. But there are just too many possibilities. Like I said before,
probably billions of possibilities. On top of that it almost seems one
would have to take a 4 year college course to understand all these terms
and what they do. Yes, I can look at an Init string chart, but WHICH
ones does my computer and modem need?
This is way beyond the average computer user, and I consider myself much
more advanced than most people, since I have always built my own
computers and stuff. I enjoy putting a computer together, and I learned
from this newsgroup a few tricks to install XP and transfer it to
another hard drive, and more. But this modem shit is nerve wracking,
and the more I read about it, the more I get confused. In the last
week, I spent way too much time with this, to the point it was driving
me bonkers. It felt like the confusion just got deeper and deeper.
And of course every change I made made me worry that I did something
wrong that may not be fixable, becuse I forgot exactly what I did and
where....
This is why the modem on Win2K has not worked for 5 years since I
installed 2K as dual boot. Seems several times each year, I'd fight
with it for a day or two, and get frustrated with it and quit. I
learned to just reboot to Win98 to go online. But months later, I'd try
it again....
Besides a lack of a decent driver, and I do question why others have not
released a better one (I'm sure other people have these same modems).
But what REALLY is puzzling, is why there is no software programs that
can actually analyze and fix the problem. They make software for
everything else, why not modem problems. Ok, there are a few that spit
out a bunch of data.
There's "Modem Doctor", which was abandoned, but what does it really
tell? It spits out a bunch of numbers and letters and gives a few error
messages, but does NOT fix the errors, or at least explain in detail
what to do. And that Portmon is something else. After looking at that
HUGE amount of data it spews out, in just a couple minutes, the amount
of data is overwhelming. Ok, I could see the init strings in use, and a
"no carrier", when it did not connect, but everything else is total
Greek..... Does all that stuff happen, (over 1000 entries), in jsut 2
minutes????
Oh well, I only hope I can make the USR modem work better. I recall
having similar problems back in the early 90's trying to connect a
Cardinal modem to Win3.x. I finally got a USR, and was able to connect.
I never could get that Cardinal to work properly. Maybe the modem
itself was bad????? But this time, I know the modem works fine, but
only on Win98.
If nothing else, USR is still around, and still has support and
(probably) driver updates. While modems are not used real much anymore,
I know some people do still use them. I'd imagine that Win7 and Win8
need different drivers than XP, so someone has to make drivers for them.
Once I get the USR, I'll install it on XP, and then will have to try it
on Win2K also.