[Ham-Computers] RE: Modem Installation Problem

[Hsu, Aaron]

Rolly,

When you say you're installing the modem on a new HD, I'll take it to mean
that you're re-installing Win98 on a new HD or you've upgraded to a new
800MHz P-III system.  If this is the case, read on.  If not, let me know.

Win98SE most likely does not support your PC's motherboard chipset as Win98
was released before the P-III.  If you are re-installing Win98(SE), then
you'll also have to install the chipset specific drivers for your
motherboard's chipset.  If you don't, then certain functionality of the
motherboard will not work - this includes PnP, the PCI Bus, I/O ports
(parallel/serial), USB, etc.  This is especially true if you intend to
install any PCI based cards since proper detection of the PCI devices
requires that the PCI bus be fully operational.  Without the chipset support
files (either shipped with Win98(SE) or downloaded from a vendor's website),
the PCI bus will not be fully operational and PCI-based devices may not work
(such as your modem)

Do you know what chipset your PC's motherboard uses?  The most common P-III
chipsets are from Intel, VIA, SIS, and nVidia.  Each of these companies have
generic "reference" chipset driver files that will work with most of the
motherboards based on their chipsets.  However, it's best to get the chipset
updates directly from the manufacturer of the motherboard as it's possible
that they varied from the reference design and tweaked the drivers to work
with the variance (such as different "North" and "South" bridge chips or a
3rd party I/O chip).  Boars that use different North/South/IO chips can
still use the reference drivers, but you'll need to install the drivers from
all the different companies your systemboard uses.  Luckily, most
motherboard manufacturers stuck with the reference design and only made
minor tweaks to squeeze out more performance.

In the HAM-Computer archives, you'll find some posts I made regarding proper
installation of the chipset specific drivers.  If you can't find them, let
me know and I'll see if I can dig them up.

As to the differences in the USR driver filenames and sizes, I wouldn't
worry about it yet.  USR went through 2 changes of ownership in the past 5
years and the driver names are often based on the "nom d' jour" (name of the
day).  The size change might just be a revision update.  Just make sure the
motherboard chipset drivers are properly installed first before tackling
anything else.  You might even be surprised that the modem might be properly
recognized immediately after the chipset support drivers are installed.

GL, 73, and let me know if you have any Q's!

  - Aaron Hsu, NN6O
    (athsu)@unistudios.com
    (nn6o)@arrl.net
    No-QRO Int'l #1,000,006



-----Original Message-----
From: R Goodspeed (W7DGX) [mailto:rollyg@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2002 10:02 PM
To: ham computer Reflector
Subject: [Ham-Computers] Modem Installation Problem


I have a U.S. Robotics 2976 modem that won't install on a new hard drive

I am hoping someone here has expertise to help me get this modem
installed.

SOME BACKGROUND.

Windows 98 SE Intel 800 MHz Pentium with 500 Meg of ram.

The plug and play don't work.

The files for this modem where downloaded from the US Robotics site and
saved on a floppy disk. Attempts to execute the "SETUP.EXE" file results
in an illegal instruction message. Attempts to communicate with US
Robotics, both by email and phone, about this problem have failed.

LOOKING AT THE OLD HARD DRIVE on the same computer
(This hard drive has system problems but the modem still functioned
perfectly.)

The Modem Properties reports:
COM1     No Modem Installed
COM2     No Modem Installed
COM5     U.S. Robotics 56K Voice PCI

Current Communications Driver reports:
The communications driver is "comm..drv".

More Info... reports:
Port:             COM5
Interrupt:      5
Address:      A000

Also using the find file command, the downloaded files were found
somewhere in the C:\windows\system  directory (folder) or
subdirectories. There were three exceptions:
SETUP.EXE
3CPCICV.INF
3CPCIMAP.SYS

I would not expect the setup.exe to be loaded. The other two are
surprises to me.

Also some name changes occurred.
All the 3cpciv... files had he 3com prefix added.
The turbo*.vx_ files were called turbo*.vxd and were much larger.

All the files had older dates and most had minor size changes. I would
expect that with the later version.

Thanks for reading this. I hope you can help me.

           Rolly  W7DGX