🚀 go-pugleaf

Last week I got a new SupraExpress 56e Pro modem after my previous Supra
got blown up by lightning. It *seemed* to be working, although the
connection seemed a bit crap - good download speed but DNS lookups kept
failing and stuff like that.  I put that down to Freeserve at
first.  But anyway, I've finally realised that something is BADLY wrong
at this end. But it is the WEIRDEST problem I have ever seen and it is
driving me mad, I have spent all day messing around and not getting
anywhere.

Basically the speed of data *transmission* is next to zero.  I first
noticed this when I had a big lot of mail to go out and it just didn't
seem to be going out even though netstat showed an outgoing SMTP
connection and the modem Tx light was going like mad. Eventually after
much messing and connecting to different ISPs, I realised that it *was*
going out, just horrendously slowly. I also then realised that the same
was true of FTP uploads, in fact ANYTHING outbound. If I try an FTP upload
then yes, it uploads, but the average rate at the end of the transfer is
around 140 *bytes*/sec!!!! Downloads work fine, I see up to 5k/sec (which
is why it took me a while to notice this problem).

At first I suspected my Amiga's serial port, since I had had to replace
the 1488 RS232 driver IC in it last week because of it getting killed. 
Although I thought it was strange that it *half* worked. However, I
connected my Amiga with a null modem cable to a PC and tried some
transfers both ways, and it went blasting along at 57600 with no problems
and no errors or anything. So the serial port seems to be fine.

So I then suspected the modem, and this was fuelled by the fact that
issuing ATI2 (ROM checksum test) returns "ERROR". I'd reported this to
Supra, but they basically said "If it works, don't worry about it".  But
I've tried connecting the modem to the PC and connecting to the same ISP
(Freeserve) and everything works fine!  Uploads work fine, I was seeing
3k/sec on ASCII.  I tried setting the baud rate lower on the PC (57600, to
match the Amiga) and it still worked fine.

Back on the Amiga, I've tried everything I can think of, including forcing
the connect speed down to a max of 33600 (I was getting ~45000) and taking
the baud rate right down to 38400.  STILL doesn't work, I get the same
problem all the time.

So, it's definitely some weird problem this end, and is *something* to do
with software on the Amiga I think. I just don't understand what, it is
baffling me.  My previous modem (which got killed) was a SupraFAXmodem 288
(flashed to 33k6) and I never had any trouble with that, it always worked
with the serial rate set to 57600 etc. I've tried changing to 8n1.device
but that doesn't help. I'm pretty familiar with the commands and registers
of the modem, as it's basically a newer version of what I had before, so
I've checked everything and I can't see anything amiss.  I've tried all
sorts of init strings and it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.

I've even tried flashing the modem with a different ROM version (from the
Supra website) which is actually slightly older than the version that was
already in it (so much for the website having the "latest" ROM version)
Interestingly, this the ROM checksum test now works OK. However, my
connection problems are the same as ever! ARGH!

*tears hair out*

The software I'm using is AmiTCP Genesis, registered. VJ/deflate/BSD
compression etc. is off.

Someone please help before I go mad!

-- 
   * - * - *     Tim Jackson - Sheffield, UK - Arcline on IRC     * - * - *
                 Lighting technician * Musician * Programmer
     Amiga IconHandler (AppIcon drop) + Archimedes Sprite Displayer at:
                    http://www.radiolink.net/timjackson