Tuesday, September 1

This weekend I was a guest on the ComputerTalk radio show on KLIF 570 in Dallas/Fort Worth. It was my first radio show, so I was a little nervous, but I had a blast. Many thanks to hosts Gail Lightfoot, John Staples, and Kathleen Weaver for keeping me and the audience in stitches.

If there are any other radio producers out there, I'd be glad to appear on a show to discuss high speed Internet access, web page design, or Macintosh computers. (PS. The Mac Demystified just came back from the printer, and should be in bookstores by the end of September.)

Network Computing has a sneak preview of Intel's PRO/100 LAN+ Modem56 CardBus Adapter, a laptop card that supports V.90, K56flex, and 10- and 100-BaseT Ethernet.

ISP news

MindSpring plans to offer two-way cable modem service through an alliance with KNOLOGY Holdings, Inc.

Inter@ctive Week reports that AOL now has 800,000 modems, up from only 447,000 a year ago.

Flashcom is expanding its DSL service in California to include Pacific Bell and GTE customers. Monthly pricing depends on the phone carrier, with 256K service priced at $59.95 in GTE's area, and 384K service for $89 in PacBell territory. 1.5 Mbps DSL is also available.

More troubleshooting techniques

Last week I printed some reader testimonials describing how devices inside the house can interfere with high speed modems. Chris Mayer wrote in with a great method of testing all of your inside wiring at once, which he excerpted from his web page:

Next, let's eliminate your house wiring. At each house is a junction box where the phone lines enter your house. Open it. You will see one or two connections. These are modular plugs like where you plug your phone into the wall outlet. By disconnecting the plug you have disconnected that line from the house. Get a 50 foot phone extension from Lowes, Radio Shack, etc. and plug it into the disconnected receptacle. Plug the other end directly into your modem. Now you have bypassed your house wiring and are connected directly to you phone line. Retest using the above procedure. If it's better this way you may have some house wiring problems. Use this test when your connections seem worst. Trying it two or three times like this will help identify or eliminate house wiring problems. Our phone company recommends Category 5 type wiring. It is much less susceptible to interference from outside sources like radio transmitters, fluorescent lights, portable phones, etc. If you have a portable phone on your line disconnect it and test again. They have sometimes caused problems like these.

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Friday, September 4

TechSightings chose 56K.COM as the site of the day for September 3rd.

Dana Baggett says that he has already received his copy of The Mac Demystified 2/e by yours truly from the Mac Professional's Book Club.

The message board went down on Wednesday for reasons unknown. If I can't fix it this weekend, I'll reload the backup from last week.

Radio interference

I've heard from readers who could hear a radio over their phone line, but this is the best report yet, from a reader named Ken Lotts:

I have a Boca 56K Tidalwave external modem. I have an interesting report about its capabilities when in close proximity of a strong broadcast station.

I live approximately 1/2 mile from an AM radio broadcast tower. It rarely interferes with anything. When I bought the Boca 56k Tidalwave external modem, I could hear the AM radio station (loudly) in the speaker of the modem during connections (if I enabled the speaker). I could hear the broadcast station right on top of the dial tone and the broadcast station was almost as loud as the dial tone!

I have several modems (to include the 56K Winmodem from 3com). None of my other modems EVER had this problem.

The problem with the Boca 56K Tidalwave external modem is so fierce, that I struggled to even get 14.4k connections. I eventually built an RF choke and placed it on the line at which point, the Boca modem can achieve a maximum of 26,400 bps. (This contrasts the Winmodem's reliable 28,800 connections without any type of choke at all).

I once had a problem with radio signals on my ISDN line. I could hear a country music station on the ISDN line, but only when an analog phone line was plugged into the two-line Panasonic phone. The problem eventually went away on its own, so I didn't have a chance to test any solutions.

I'd be interested to hear about readers' experiences with this problem.

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