It happens that this particular modem is the only remaining plug-n-pray card and, while most of these critters have some sort of driver that makes them assume some identity, this particular one doesn't. It does have a flash utility, but even that can't find the thing. Nonetheless, when I put the modem in a plug-n-play system it identifies itself, but the system can't find it sufficiently to identify it enough to install it. The install routine, unlike most, requires that one proceed only after the OS has announced recognition of the modem, at which point you're supposed to use the CD that comes with the modem. Unfortunately, though I've never had to use it before, it doesn't work to do the install now, because it can't find where the modem is.
This system has been almost totally trouble-free, with the exception that, since the little old lady that uses it for web surfing and email hasn't learned how to avoid accumulating junk from the web, her disk space has gotten so low that the printer driver won't work any longer, so we replaced here 545 MB drive with a 13.6 GB one. Installing that was somewhat of a pain, but now that it's in place, it works great. If only one could get a modem that wasn't plug and play and didn't require a 22 GHz pentium to make it work.
This box has a 160 MHz 5x86, which is just a sort-of Pentium-compatible '486. I've got dozens of these "out there" among the pro-bono clientele I've accumulated over the years and even though they're not the latest, fastest, etc, you'll have trouble prying the users' cold-dead fingers from around them. They really like them. I've found 300 MHz Pentium-equipped motherboards for $40 and not one of these folks wanted to swap 'em. These old things still have a couple of VLB slots along with a couple of ISA slots and 3 PCI. My mother has one too, and even she doesn't complain.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Christian Fandt
To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2000 8:05 PM
Subject: Re: OT: Philips "Easy-Connect" modem
Upon the date 07:47 AM 8/29/00 -0600, Richard Erlacher said something like:
I know this isn't what we're here to discuss, but I was wondering if anybody uses or has experience with a Philips 56K-flex "EasyConnect" modem.
The woman who lives next-door to my Mom, and has for the past 40+ years is a virtual shut-in due to her dependence on oxygen due to her advanced emphysema from years of smoking, an her computer is an important source of outlet and outside-world contact for her. I recently replaced her hard-disk for her, having installed this entire system, bit-by-bit, over a number of years, and it has worked remarkably well until recently. I installed her hard disk and reinstalled the Windows95 (no update to '98 because the OSR-2 version of '95 worked so satisfactorily for her) and everything works beautifully EXCEPT the MODEM.
This model is a Plug-N-Play modem, and slid in effortlessly when I first set it up for her, but her motherboard is not a plug-n-play type of board. It doesn't attempt to go out and manipulate the devices that are out there in order to configure the interrupts and port locations. I'm curious whether anyone has had to solve this sort of problem before and has a solution. I've tried everything I could think of and have had no luck at all. Any reasonable suggestions are welcome.
thanks,
Dick
Dick,
Here's what I think based on very similar experience a couple months back:
My hard disk started to die. Loosing boot sector code, reinstalling windoze95, dying a short time later, etc. Scandisk showing more and more failing clusters. You know the story . . .
I bought a new disk and put it in. Everything's happy.
Installed several applications first before my office-related stuff, such as: Eudora, Netscape, and one or two more apps that I constantly use. Fine for them. Startup and run well. Now, when I tried to setup the modem (USRobotics 56k Winmodem, it's plug-n-pray, and had always had worked well before the disk crashes) the dialer could not find the modem.
"What the . . .??"
To shorten the story, because from here on there had been a LOT of cussin' and fiddling with stuff -even reformatting and reinstalling w95 in somewhat varied ways over a week or so of time- to try to figure out why a previously working modem suddenly won't work, I'll just get to my point.
I found that if I shut down and _remove_ the modem and then install windoze 95 on a _clean_, freshly formatted disk and then shut down and re-install the modem, _then_ the parts of w95 that need to will see the modem (remember, it's a plug-n-pray modem that I have -like you'd said your friend's was). My m'board is supposed to be "Plug-n-Play" but in this case there are probably subtle things that made it mostly plug-n-pray for sure.
Although I have some experience with installing PNP hardware onto w95/98 systems, it seems to me that while installing the w95 onto a previously hardware configured box, the PNP majic of the system will not correctly detect and install the PNP hardware into the new system. Maybe this is old hat to some of you that had come against this problem, but it's new to me as I'm not one to buy lots of hardware stuff to play with and try out and otherwise tinker with my machines. The machines are tools for me and I put my money resources into s/w tools I need or my old radio collection (as Hans F. and Wm. Donzelli can attest ;)
BTW, I'm using w95 OSR-2 also. 8-24-96 is the majority of file dates on the distribution.
This is just a suggestion that you may have run into the same type of PNP conflict, which you may have guessed already, and an offer of a possible solution.
Good luck!
Regards, Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA cfandt_at_netsync.net
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL:
http://www.antiquewireless.org/
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Received on Tue Aug 29 2000 - 22:29:46 BST