"Carl P. Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hello, all . . .  I made a serious blunder: although there was
> nothing wrong with my venerable rig, which has a Cyrix chip
> that's half-way between a 486 and an early Pentium, I bought a
> new one with a 20-G drive and lots of bells and whistles.
>               [...] so I bought a 56 PCI modem (Archtek
> SmartLink 5634PCV) that was supposed to work with DOS and LINUX.
> The only thing that works is Procomm Plus, which is hardly ever
> used. PEGASUS for DOS, Arachne 1.66 and Nettamer do not.

The problem with ALL PCI devices is that they use "virtual"
comport numbers.  It might show as being installed as say,
com2 (which Arachne, etc. using eppd, should have no problem
addressing...) - but the PCI installer may have actually placed
it at real-life com8, which only REPORTS as if it were com2.
(Procomm, for example, can directly address com1-8.)

The easy way to fix this is to purchase only those PCI modems
which contain jumpers for setting comport and IRQ.
However, there are PCI "overseer" programs (usually installed
during boot up, or even as late as inside autoexec.bat) which
enable you to select a good (com1-4) or better (com1-2) address
as actual (not virtual) installation address.
(While some folks have reported that Arachne/eppd worked for them
with modems on com3 or 4 - after lots of fussing - I've never
seen it happen on any machine.  Com1 or 2 only...)

Throughout this exchange, you have not mentioned the comport
address (either the real one or the virtual one) at which
your computer thinks the modem is sitting.

This, BTW, is one case where Windows can actually have a
benefit.  If you know what you're doing, windows manual
hardware installations of PCI modems can be made to place
the comport in any of the REAL com1 through 4 slots, even
if it lacks jumpers for "hard" settings.  (Windoze "auto"
installations will invariably call it com3 or 4 - but it
is actually on a com port with a higher number than 8.)

For any DOS-based comm program to work, it is essential that
the modem actually be installed as com1-4.  (Better if it is
com1 or 2.)  If you succeed in doing this, Linux comms won't
be a problem either.

- John T.

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