Re: OT: USR Modem troubles
Jeff Maxson said:
> not against purchasing a new chip and then borrowing a soldering iron if
> that would be cheaper... Ideas?
>
I've used a lot of modems and never had one go bad on me yet(maybe I'm
lucky). but it sounds to me that the problem is the line quality. If
you can, have the phone company come out and test the lines, of course that
may not resolve the problem. in my apt I have a bad line too, phone
company says its perfect, but modems have a real hard time with it,
only if I go through my 2nd phone line(which has my DSL) do modems work
perfectly.
USR used to have a BBS which you could use to test to see if you had a good
chance of getting 56k connections. This was back in the mid 90s I don't
know if they still have it, it was pretty cool, did a buncha tests and
spit out a page or 2 of information to you. Here is a page which
details some instructions on how to dial their BBS, though I don't
know if its out of date or not:
http://www.ptfolkschool.org/helpnet/linetest.htm
about the only thing I can suggest is try forcing the modem to a lower
baud rate, check the documentation on how to do this, its been so
many years since I played with a modem I forget how, its one of the
AT commands though, there is a comand where you can force it to NOT
use v90, and try to use X2(in my case 56Kflex), or not use any 56k
technology at all(as in, don't even try), and you can force it to
(try) to connect at a specific speed. 56k connections are real flakey
in general, you may have better luck forcing the modem to 33.6k or
28.8k. Also try to find out how far away you are from the phone company's
CO. I think theres a form on dslreports.com that can assist you, though
I'm sure its not 100% accurate. I live near a business district and am
about 6,000 feet from the CO(about 5 blocks away), so my lines are
perfect quality. The qwest tech told me once they had never seen
residential lines that were such good quality before.
But for sure I would blame the line before blaming the modem esp
if its a good USR. Unless you have another modem and can confirm it
works perfectly on the same line.
of course always be sure that the phone line is surge protected,
to reduce the risk of damage. If you have dsl I also reccomend
an ethernet surge supressor(APC has one for about $30), since it
doesn't seem possible to surge supress the phone line side of
the DSL(it wipes out the dsl signal). So I catch it on the other
side of the modem before it hits any important equipment. My incoming
cable goes through surge supression as well.
nate
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