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Tuesday, September 29
Tony Ng notes new Diamond Multimedia beta
firmware dated September 22.
High speed modems
Jon
Healey of the San Jose Mercury News reports on
Qualcomm's efforts to deliver wireless data at speeds
comparable to cable modems, and up to 50 times faster than
conventional analog modems.
Bob
Sullivan of MSNBC looks at Dell's deal to bundle ADSL
modems with some computers. The catch is that the modems
only work with the ADSL service provided by SBC
Communications in California. 56K modems still have the
cardboard
box advantage.
The Red Herring's Peter Jeffram chips in with "In
Broadband Wars, Will DSL Seriously Challenge Cable?"
Data Communication's "Cable
Modem Services: A Bad Reception" by Andrew Cray looks at
problems getting cable modem service for corporate networks.
Help for Motorola users
I get four frequent questions from Motorola users who
have installed the V.90
upgrade:
- Is there a way to downgrade back to K56flex if I need
to?
- Is there a V.90 Windows 95/98 .inf file for the
Motorolas?
- After installing the upgrade, why is the reported
speed 57600 or 115200 instead of the true speed?
- Is there a V.90 upgrade for the United Kingdom?
The answer to 1 and 2 is yes. Motorola has a K56flex
downgrader, and V.90
.inf files. Both of these are available on the same page
as the V.90 upgrade.
The solution to the third problem is to install
the new V.90 .inf files. K56flex and V.90 have different
connect speeds, so the old K56flex .inf file can't report
the true
connect speed.
The answer to number four is that there is not a V.90
upgrade for the UK. Sorry, I don't when there will be.
Friday, October 2
Brian McWilliams notes a Geek
Girl story regarding a primitive form of
denial-of-service: force the user or the user's software to
output "+++ATH0". The +++ escapes to command mode, making
the modem receptive to AT commands. The ATH0 then hangs up
the modem. The easiest fix is to add s2=255 to your init
string to change the escape character. On most modems, any
value higher than 127 disables the escape process. If you
still want to be able to escape to command mode, try
increasing the guard time using the S12 register.
BTW, if you miss Brian's PC World News Radio broadcasts,
you'll like his new site, PC
Radio.
Jacob
Ward of The Standard speculates on who Lucent
Technologies will buy next.
Shane Lord of Sirius Technologies notes V.90 upgrades for
Avtek and
NetComm
modems. The downloads include V.90 firmware, V.90 drivers,
and a K56flex downgrade in case you change your mind.
Eric Pendergrass is selling a Cardinal Connecta x2/V.90
for $33 on the Classifieds
board.
New server coming soon
To compensate for the increased traffic on 56K.COM, I'm
moving the site to a faster web server. The change may come
as early as next week. I'll post more information when the
dates firm up.
Troubleshooting guide updated
I've added new material to the guide.
The help
with slow connects page list some new advice, such as
disconnecting telephone devices from the back of the modem,
and manually selecting which 56K protocol to use. I've also
reorganized the troubleshooting procedure: the easy steps
are listed first, so as not to scare off new computer users.
The biggest additions are to the disconnects
page. It's been reorganized, and has some new advice:
try unplugging telephony devices from the back of the modem.
There's also help for Lucent
LT Win Modem disconnects: change the init string to
AT&FX and use software flow control instead of hardware
flow control.
BTW, the modem is supposed to ignore anything plugged
into the extra phone jack when the modem is in use, but
that's clearly not the case with some modems. I have email
from several readers that had problems with disconnects and
slow connects that disappeared when the extra telephony
devices were unplugged.
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