Well, time has come. I've been using this old modem for a long time. It is an external 14400 and I'm getting a new one. My mouse was on COM1 and the modem was connected to COM2.
Hehehe, with this new 56K, the surfing will be much better and they said it was a snap. Just take the cover off the computer. Plug it into a spare ISA slot close the cover and hook up the phone lines. It is plug and play so WIN95 will find it on boot up. When asked about installing drivers say have disk (some just use WIN95 drivers) and point to the disk provided (or CD-ROM).
Well, we did and everything worked according to instructions. It was easy. Now lets try connecting to my ISP and get on the net. I have this nice little shortcut for my dial-up connection.
I get an error message !!! Something about modem not found. What happened ?? Lets try again - maybe even a reboot. Same message. Time to call customer support or the store. I got a bum modem. It was working fine before installing this new one!!!!
Well, lets take a look in the connectoid or the settings and see what it says. Right click on the connection icon in Dial-up Networking and select properties. Under "connect using" it still shows my old modem. Let's change it - Use the pull down tab and select the new modem. Now, lets try again. It connects and I'm on the net. Everything seems to be working fine.
After surfing for awhile and downloading it seems slow. Looking at that little symbol in the task bar it says 19200. Hmmm, this is 56K modem. Why 19200??
Let's look at the settings and go through them in detail:
Open My Computer -----> Dial-Up Networking.
Right click on the connection and select properties
click configure and check that the port setting is set to 115200 (or 57600)
The connect only at this speed must not be checked
click connection then advanced
"use error control" - "use flow control" and "use hardware RTS/CTS" should be checked
If having connect problems, items that may help is the following:
disable compression
Turn off Error control
Reduce port speed to 57600
Well, everything seems to be working properly. I'll try using my old true terminal program from DOS and connect to my old BBS to play some of the online Games. I'm using Telix. It doesn't work ??? Now What ??
Well, back to Win95. It still works. Let's do some checks here.
Open control Panel ----> System Icon and click Device manager
Click on the + in front of modems and high Light the modem then select properties
click The modem tab - It says Com3 ???? While here make sure the speed is set properly
Click Resources. What happened ?? It says IRQ9 and some funny address. At this time I'm stuck. Telex will not recognize a modem at IRQ9 with that port Address. Oh, I forgot to tell you I also have a PNP motherboard.
At this time you have problems?? How to solve them depends on the rest of your configuration. In this case the easier solution is to remove the modem. Reboot your system -enter BIOS and disable Com2 in BIOS. Sometimes this actually requires removing the connector from the motherboard to the back. Then on reboot try to make the modem install on COM2. You may have to setup Telix for the proper port and IRQ after finishing. The same would apply to any terminal application not specially designed for win95.
What has happened is that the BIOS is assigning ports, addresses and interrupts. This information is used by WIN95 thus when it comes to installing the modem -it gets the next available IRQ.
Back to my originally recommendation - when installing hardware some planning is required. While the modem works fine and installs OK, you have limitations imposed by some of the legacy applications which needs to be considered. Thus, something which might have solved the problem here is to remove the sound card installed on IRQ5 then install the modem which would have used IRQ5 and might have been compatible with Telix (and also WIN95). Then reinstall the sound card which then would have used IRQ9.
Find homes for Legacy Devices and items that has limitations first.
Then any ISA plug and play items and last any PCI plug and play items.
Port And Com info Some General Info on COM Ports on the PC
Checking Line Quality :
Here are some Microsoft KB articles on modem problems and connect issues:
Q158114 Another Program is using the selected Telephony .......
Q169157 Dial-up Networking cannot find the specified modem
Q138634 Modem is busy or not responding
Q168222 Port in use or Port already open
Q152064 How to Install an Internal Modem in Windows 95
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Last revised: June 07, 1999