On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Brian Smith wrote:
>
> I know all the stuff about external modems being easy & blinking (lights)
> and all that, <display ignorance> but surely there must be some advantages
> to having the modem</display ignorance> connected directly to the PCI bus.
> Maybe the data transfer rate is just too slow for it to matter?
>
> Brian
>
IMHO, the only three advantages to an internal modem are
1. They are inside your PC
2. They are generally cheaper
3. They leave you with a spare com port, and if you have an old 486 that
you wanna use as a dial-up NAT / firewall box you can still get 56K
bitrates
The disadvantages are (again in my opinion)
1. They are hard to set up.
2. They can be prone to failure (see 1)
3. You cannot just kill the connection by turning the modem off if you
wanna use the phone
4. No way to tell what they are doing (see 2)
5. No blinking lights ;( (see 4)
6. The use up a PCI slot - having a 56000 baud on a 33,000,000 bus is a
waste
Just my tuppence worth
Monkey
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