🚀 go-pugleaf

Forgive me for breaking the newbie six-month rule, but I have a rather
pressing problem: my sister's A3010 is struggling on the Internet. She has
4MBytes RAM, 82MByte HD with 25MBytes free, ANT Internet suite 1.22,
Dynalink 33600 voice/fax/data modem, Demon internet account, and 2 
extension cables (3m and 15m) plugged into each other. The problem 
specifically is grindingly slow access for the first few minutes of use,
and then stationary access. There are a great many (about 3-5 per second)
'Bad FCS on frame count...' errors in the logging window at this stage.

I have a SA RPC with more RAM than you can shake a stick at etc., which is
configured in the same way as the A3010 except for serial speed which is
19200 on the A3010. We share the modem (taking it in turns). With the RPC,
Internet access is fine. For elimination purposes we used the A3010 with my
phone line - and it didn't work - so I do not think that the extension
cables are the problem. I have also tried taking the serial speed right down
to 9600, but to no avail. In addition, a friend suggested using SLIP intead
of PPP, but I found that this produced an error along the lines of
'Different prompt to expected' in the logon phase.

I realise that replacing the A3010 would be a good idea - I daily plead with
my sister to get herself an A7000+ - but she will not spend a farthing.

This problem is particularly grave because my sister has broken her usual
puritan rules and agreed to pay half of the modem cost, phone, and ISP
bills. Without her, I shall have to send every last item back because my own
finances are far too low to pay for it all by myself. :-(

I would be eternally grateful to any kind souls who can suggest a workable
(and preferably cheap) solution.