(OT) A tip for all you Desktop PC users...

...who want a faster and better modem.

The Best Data Products 56SF is a great little modem. I now have 56SFs in both of my Windoze PCs, and I am sore tempted to go out and buy one for my DOS/Linux machine.

Now, I have NO interest in Best Data Products. They just make good modems and since I live about 5 miles from their factory I know that if something goes wrong with it I can bring it there and wave the malfunctioning modem in their faces.

I also want to let people know that I have NO interest in Office Max either. However, the folks at Office Max are selling the 56SF for $50 this week. This is a damn good price and I gladly forked over the money for it. However, after dropping in at Best Data's website, I saw that there is an ADDITIONAL $20 REBATE on the little sucker. Just go to the site, look under rebates and that puppy's right there. Grand total: $30.

This is NOT a WinModem. This is a modem with a full-fledged controller chip, it doesn't use your CPU for ANYTHING. It is Linux-ready as well as bearable to install under Windows...this is not plug-and-prey but if you set the modem for Com 4 and do a hardware detect it is detected after add/remove hardware cycles through. It comes out of the box set for Com 2...don't use this setting unless you are asking for trouble and conflicts. Set it for Com 4...the interrupt is correct, don't change that.

I am letting people know about this because we Darianites are FAMILY and I would be remiss in not telling my extended Daria family about this deal. I have blabbed about it to my other family members...now I'm letting y'all know about it.

This is a rock-solid V90 with a Rockwell/Conexant chipset and I get 48Kbps connections consistently from it.

Go forth and snag, folks... --.\\<-H--

Kind of curious about this point -- what's wrong with using COM2? That's my usual default choice (given the mouse on COM1) for modems, and I've never seen a problem. All you need is to make sure the IRQ in the BIOS is set properly (i.e. different from COM1, really).

Setting it to COM4 if you don't use anything else as COM2 is really about the same effect. They have a slightly different physical reference, but the IRQ is shared between them (same as 1&3).

Just one bad experience, or is there a pattern of problems I've been lucky enough to dodge?

Don

[email] (Don Morris) wrote in :

Well most modern motherboards that have serial ports built on, have them configured as COM1 & COM2, so if you install an internal modem as COM2, then it's gonna clash, unless you either disable the on board COM2, or assign it to another COM port. I think this is what Michelle was getting at.

Yes they may use the same IRQ, but they do use different IO addresses, which is why there would be no problem :)

You've prolly been lucky, in my experience serial communications can be one of the most problematic areas of computing at times (and I'm not just talking PC's here people :) ).

Phill.