🚀 go-pugleaf

*** Reply-To: john.erland[TAKE_THIS_OUT]@coconutcomm.com

[Please e-mail a copy of all replies to the NG, as my ISP's Usenet
connectivity is somewhat less than perfect.  Thanks.]

If there's a better NG or a source for an appropriate FAQ for getting
this nightmare dealt with, I'm all ears, but in the meantime I'll ask
here:

What's with my problems getting a good high-speed v.90/K56Flex
connection?  Check this out; read carefully and tell me what I'm
doing wrong or missing:

======================================================================

In the past two weeks, I have been through FOUR different modems that
allege themselves to be capable of high speed connections, but in the
event are not.  I'm getting tired of driving out to Fry's.

After going through three WinModems, two of which were similar Lucent
Technology chipset generics and one a ModemBlaster DI5631 with a
Rockwell chipset, I succumbed to the advice that a WinModem would never
work.  I then bought a "real" modem, a Creative ModemBlaster DI5601.  If
it's possible, this one works even worse than the previous ones.  The
first time I ran it it made a beautiful, instant hi-speed K56 connect
with my provider - then never did so again, even after hundreds of
attempts.  Curiously, the earlier DI5631 worked well at first, too, then
seemed to roll over and croak.  The Lucent chipset WinModems never got a
high speed connection even once.

I have used several different terminal and Winsock programs and have
attempted to connect to a sampling of about fifteen high-speed numbers
for various ISPs, all with similar results.  I can manage a good
high speed connect about 1% of the time.  Examination of the
undocumented connection diagnostic page at AT&V1 shows the rest of the
attempts result in a FAILED RETRAIN abort at high speed or a connect at
26.4 or 28.8.

PacBell has repeatedly diagnosed the line and finds not only that it is
clean of ground faults and noise, but also has the maximum voltage and
decibel gain.  They insist that the line is not even iffy, it's
excellent.

I'm currently using Win98 on a Pentium 133 w/32megs memory & Award BIOS.
Certainly this isn't a state of the art platform but it should be
adequate to make a decent connection with my ISP.

I have tried at great expense to connect with Creative's customer
support number, to no avail.  They report a two-week backlog in replying
to e-mail requests for tech support.  The provided documentation is
extremely scanty and inadequate to do any advanced troubleshooting.  The
"Troubleshooting" section of their webpage seems to be limited to the
"Are you sure you have it plugged in?" level of advice.

I must be missing something here.

He'p a brother out.

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"Fans of the irascible John Erland will be glad to know that he is
returning to the net following the resolution of the tragic personal
problems that have kept him away for the past year.  A new webpage is in
the design stage and will include archives of published essays, audio
files from his New York radio broadcasts and photos of the elusive Erland
and 'his little gray cat'..."
                                        _WEBGossip_, 9-98
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