Someone we sold a computer to cannot get Netscape working at home on his
phone line at 28.8 or 14.4 bps.  He lives in Chelsea.  The computer and modem
work fine on his mother's phone in Dexter and on the Kiwanis phone.  A
previous computer with a different modem (14.4) worked in Chelsea.  Is there
something that the phone company might be able to do to correct this problem?
Or do some types of modems work better than others on bad phone lines, and
if so, which type should he be looking for (or should he settle for the
working 14.4 on that phone line instead of a faster one)?
Both are internal modems.  What does v32 mean?  We have found that certain
14.4 modems would work with Procomm but not with Netscape, why?

12 responses total.

Can't answer many of your questions, but v32 is the standard for the 
type of modem.  Each modem maker does things somewhat differently, and 
the standards are meant to insure that different manufacturers' modems 
can talk to each other.  I'm sure someone around can answer your 
questions better than I...

The owner of the computer which runs Netscape at Kiwanis but not in Chelsea
reports that it also works in Dexter.  Chelsea may have noiser phone lines.
Yesterday we went through three 2400 bps modems before one would connect to
our ISP, and it only connected about half the time.  And crashed occasionally.
Our ISP supports 2400 modems, also shell accounts, a dying breed.
It was downloading a jpeg at 180 pbs then gradually dropped to 40, so I
changed the buffer size from 6 to 2.  The new owner says she is patient and
appreciates all the effort Kent put into adding RAM (the first RAM stopped
working correctly when it warmed up, but we got it donated without
guarantees), and finding a video card that would support 256 colors, and then
finding a suitable driver for the Tseng chip in it, and loading Netscape
(slowly.....) and then discovering the 14.4 modem a customer had just donated
was a winmodem and needed software.  We went throught the bag of 2400s, half
of which were not working at all.  Kent has managed this feat twice.  Maybe
some day someone will donate a working 486 with 8 slots, but in the meantime
we are setting up 386s for Netscape for grateful customers, and will have to
learn more about which modems are likeliest to work.
What does v32 mean?  Other than that it is standard?
Why do some modems work on noisy phone lines and others do not?

Your ISP will say they will support 2400 bps modems if their modems claim to
support it, but it's a pretty sure bet that none of the modern access server
manufacturers are spending much time on debugging their 2400 bps code.  I
wouldn't expect it to work at all reliably.

On the phone line issue, where they can connect from somewhere in Ann Arbor
and from somewhere in Dexter, but not in Chelsea, there are a couple of
problems that could be happening.  One would be with the individual phone line
in Chelsea.  If they have multiple phone lines, it would be good to try from
both lines and see what happens.  Alternately, they could try connecting to
a modem on the other end that gets its lines from a different CLEC than the
one their ISP is using, or to something that's still using Ameritech lines
(Grex, for example).  If even that fails, it's likely that there's a problem
with their phone line.

If they can connect to everything except the ISP (and other things with the
same area code and exchange as the ISPs dial-up numbers), there may be a
trunking issue between Ameritech and the CLEC (alternative local phone
company) that their ISP is using.  The ISP should be able to help them get
that resolved.  Typically, that involves the ISP opening a ticket with the
CLEC on the problem.  At that point, some of the CLECs have people at
Ameritech they can call to figure out what path the call is taking and get
the problem resolved, while other CLECs want the customer to open a ticket
with Ameritech as well, claiming Ameritech won't talk to them about the
problem otherwise.

This modem works fine with grex, from Chelsea.  I will suggest he talk to the
ISP and ask them to figure out the problem, or give him his old 14.4 modem
if nothing else works.  Chelsea supposedly has bad phone lines in general.
He could I suppose try a neighbor's phone once, too.  But all Chelsea lines
are supposed to be noisy.  Maybe the two modems handle noise differently?

I read that v.32 indicates a 9600 bps, v.32 bis a 14.4K bps modem, v22 and
v22bis 1200 and 2400, v34 a 28.8 or 33.3.  Usually, at least.

I've always been able to connect to ISPs at 2400 when I've tried it. Not that
it's a very fast connection... but telnet has worked okay.

The old 14.4 modem worked in Chelsea in the new computer.  The new 28.8 modem
would not work even at 14.4.
We have gotten two 2400 bps modems working with Netscape.  Some 14.4 externals
would work with Procomm but not Netscape.  One cable only works up to 9600.

Please explain how winmodems work, other than needing special software.  The
computer store said only to use them on pentiums, they slow down the computer.

A modem is a fairly complex device, and normal modems have their own
processor and a fair amount of intelligence on board.  This is because modern
modems have to be able to do things like error correction and compression,
which require a processor.  The idea of a Winmodem is to make the device
cheaper by eliminating the on-board intelligence, and having the system's
CPU do error correction and compression and things via software.  The
disadvantages are that you now have a modem that works exclusively under
Windows, since it's useless without the drivers.  It also slows down the
machine a little, since it's now having to think for the modem too, though
it's probably not a dramatic difference on a Pentium-class machine.

There is one advantage to this, other than cost.  The modem can be upgraded,
to a certain extent, just by upgrading the drivers.  However, since most
modern modems use Flash ROM and are upgradable anyway, it's not too much of
an advantage anymore.

We don't have any pentiums and will therefore avoid the winmodem.  Skytech
has Rockwell internal 56K modems for $54, and winmodems for $25.  Only the
former are recommended for a 386.

Interesting problem.  I went through our other 10 or so 2400 internal modems
and found only two that would initialize with Netscape/Win3.1.  All the others
worked with Procomm.  All connected to grex at 2400 even if Procomm was set
to 9600, and all ran grex at the same speed.

Of these two that initialized, one downloaded with Netscape at speeds ranging
from 28 to 35 bps, at various times and websites.  The other, which returned
the answer 960 to an ati query (other 2400 modems said 242 or 248 or 249),
downloaded in Netscape at 1.0K.  It is a much larger card (full length).
Why the difference in Netscape but not Procomm?

We have one other modem with a mouse port, which Jim thinks is Logitech.

Why does grex say it has connected at 19600 to my 14.4 modem when grex's
modems are said to be 14.4?  I have set Procomm at 19600 since there is no
14.4 setting.

How fast would a 14.4 winmodem run if installed in a 386?  Assuming we could
get hold of the relevant software.  Since we are out of usable 2400's, it
might be useful even at slower speeds.

It's possible that one of your '2400 baud' modems is a 9600.  1.0K/second
shouldn't be possible on a 2400, I shouldn't think.

The reason your 14.4 claims to have connected at 19600, and the reason your
2400 baud modems work with the port speed set to 9600, is actually the same
effect.  There are two baud rates involved in any modem connection.  One is
the speed at which the computer talks to the modem, the other is the speed
at which the modem talks over the phone line.  It's perfectly possible to
have the computer send data to the modem at 9600 baud, and have the modem
then transmit it at 2400 baud.  You just have to make sure you have hardware
handshaking enabled, so that when the computer eventually outruns the modem,
the modem is able to tell it to stop and let it catch up.  Your 14.4 modem
is reporting the speed at which it's talking to your computer, not the speed
it's talking over the phone line at.

With modern modems that support data compression, it's very common to run
the computer's port speed higher than the modem's speed.  For example, my
28.8 modem can only send data over the phone lines at 28,800 bits per
second.  *However*, if the data is something the modem can compress well,
the actual throughput may be as high as 56,000 bits per second.  So I run my
serial port at 57,600 baud.  I've seen sustained transfer rates as high as
4K/second with the right files, so the data compression really does work.

Is it possible one of our modems that will only do grex at 2400 (even with
Procomm set to 9600 it falls back to 2400) does data compression better than
the other, slower, one?  We have Netscape and Windows set to 9600 or 14.4 as
these are the slowest possible settings.  The larger modem is the faster one
(by a factor of 30 or so).
        This explains why our other volunteers are always arguing about whether
to set Netscape at 56K for a 14.4 modem, and why we need hardware handshaking.
Thanks.
        Just got two external modems in, a 2400 and a 14.4!  We can put
together one more Netscape computer now.

A new problem.  We have a modem (had a modem?), 33K, in a computer with a
software disable of Com2.  Shiva will not recognize that there is a Com2
unless we first run Terminal or Procomm.  Arachne says the modem is not
initialized.  Procomm and Procomm Plus and NewDeal worked fine with it, except
that NewDeal would not recognize Com2 after running Procomm unless we first
ran Syschk (which resets whatever Procomm set) or rebooted.

Someone suggested we change the init string in NewDeal to put it back to
factory default ATF0 or ATF1.  Tried both, would not dial.  Jim suggested a
combination of ATf0z or ATF1z.  Would not dial.  At which point we realized
that Procomm and Procomm Plus no longer are communicating with the modem.
Rebooted, turned it off and then on, still no response.  Nothing has been
unplugged.  MSD and Syschk find a modem in Com2.  Did we do something bad to
Procomm or to the modem?  Now what?????

What is ATW2x1?  The first and third versions of Newdeal beta use that, while
version 2 uses ATZ.  Version 1 worked, version 3 did not (different modem than
version 1) so I switched to ATZ, which worked until we did the above.  Do
different modems need different strings to dial with the same software?

ATF0 and ATF1 are supposedly factory resets.

This is our fastest modem so we would like it to work again. Perhaps sitting
overnight will help (it helped to leave a problem monitor turned off).

After the modem was turned off for five minutes, it worked again.
Found a modem book listing the command meanings.  ATZ is soft reset, which
explains why NewDeal recognizes the modem after sending that string.

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