This customer was connecting, but getting serious
retrains/renegotiations. I watched it from the PM one night as he
connected. He connected at 48,000, and within 2 minutes had racked up 5
retrains and 7 renegs. The weird thing was that in spite of the
retrains/renegs, his modem speed never seemed to deviate from 48,000 (at
least that's what the PM3 said). As you can imagine, his connection was
practically at a standstill. Just for the record, our PM3 is running
ComOS 3.8.
Anyway, upon further investigation, I found that there were two things
that seemed to be amiss:
1. His UART was reporting 8250 instead of 16550
2. His modem driver was 2.1.2.120.1
Not too long ago, instructions were posted to the list on how to fix the
UART problem, so I sent those instructions to the customer, along with
the URL for the latest driver from Compaq (2.1.2.134). I had him dial
into our old PM25 V.34 modem pool to do the driver download. After
fixing the UART problem and installing the new driver, his problems
practically disappeared. I checked his connection the other night, and
found he had been online for 58 minutes with 2 renegs. In addition,
he's now connecting at 50,666. Before these upgrades, the highest he
ever got was 48,000. The customer is now a happy camper! In fact, I
e-mailed him yesterday to ask if it was still working okay (follow-ups
make customers feel all warm and fuzzy), and he e-mailed me back just
raving about our service; he thinks we're the best thing that ever came
down the pike. Cool!
Here's the info I sent him for those who may be having trouble with
these things. I don't know if these fixes will work for all
ISP/PM3/telco/Compaq/HCF configurations out there, but they sure seem to
work for us! My thanks to those who posted these fixes to the list
originally!
- Fix for Compaq Presario w/Rockwell HCF reporting UART 8250:
1. Click Start | Settings | Control Panel.
2. Double Click the 'System' Icon, in control panel.
3. Click the Device Manager TAB, on the System Properties Window.
4. Double click the 'MODEM' line.
5. Double click the 'Rockwell HCF 56K Data Fax PCI Modem' line.
6. On the Rockwell Properties window, click the Resources TAB.
7. Remove the check to 'Use automatic settings' box.
8. In the "Setting based on:" line, change the Basic configuration
0000 (generally the default setting) to 0001 or vice versa. Press apply
and yes to the warning window.
9. Restart the computer. This will assign either COM 3 or COM 5 to the
modem.
10. Perform Steps 1 to 6, making sure that the box for 'Use automatic
settings', is still unchecked.
11. Change the Basic Configuration from 0001 back to 0000 or vice
versa. Press apply and yes to warning window.
12. Restart the computer. This will re-assign COM 2 to the modem.
13. To confirm the above worked...once back into windows go to
start/settings/control panel...click on the modem icon..modem properties
window opens. Click on the diagnostics tab and insure the rockwell shows
on comm 2 and not comm 5 at this point. If it is on comm 2..highlight
the
comm 2 then press the more info button below. Wait a bit for the
information screen to appear. It should list some items in the white box
which at this point is not important. Above the white box you want to
see
in the UART section the number 16550..if it is 8250 then the procedure
was
not followed exactly as described here.
- Compaq Rockwell HCF version 2.1.2.134 upgrade URL:
http://www.compaq.com/athome/support/softpaq/pages/sp8897.html
Craig
Xpressweb Internet Services
bairdc@xpressweb.com
http://www.xpressweb.com
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