29 Aug
2000
29 Aug
'00
2:05 p.m.
Upon the date 07:47 AM 8/29/00 -0600, Richard Erlacher said something like:
I know this isn't what we're here to discuss, but I was wondering if anybody
uses or has experience with a Philips 56K-flex "EasyConnect" modem.
The woman who lives next-door to my Mom, and has for the past 40+ years is a
virtual shut-in due to her dependence on oxygen due to her advanced emphysema
from years of smoking, an her computer is an important source of outlet and
outside-world contact for her. I recently replaced her hard-disk for her,
having installed this entire system, bit-by-bit, over a number of years, and
it has worked remarkably well until recently. I installed her hard disk and
reinstalled the Windows95 (no update to '98 because the OSR-2 version of '95
worked so satisfactorily for her) and everything works beautifully EXCEPT the
MODEM.
This model is a Plug-N-Play modem, and slid in effortlessly when I first set
it up for her, but her motherboard is not a plug-n-play type of board. It
doesn't attempt to go out and manipulate the devices that are out there in
order to configure the interrupts and port locations. I'm curious whether
anyone has had to solve this sort of problem before and has a solution. I've
tried everything I could think of and have had no luck at all. Any
reasonable suggestions are welcome.
thanks,
Dick
Dick,
Here's what I think based on very similar experience a couple months back:
My hard disk started to die. Loosing boot sector code, reinstalling windoze95,
dying a short time later, etc. Scandisk showing more and more failing clusters.
You know the story . . .
I bought a new disk and put it in. Everything's happy.
Installed several applications first before my office-related stuff, such as:
Eudora, Netscape, and one or two more apps that I constantly use. Fine for
them. Startup and run well. Now, when I tried to setup the modem (USRobotics
56k Winmodem, it's plug-n-pray, and had always had worked well before the disk
crashes) the dialer could not find the modem.
"What the . . .??"
To shorten the story, because from here on there had been a LOT of cussin' and
fiddling with stuff -even reformatting and reinstalling w95 in somewhat varied
ways over a week or so of time- to try to figure out why a previously working
modem suddenly won't work, I'll just get to my point.
I found that if I shut down and _remove_ the modem and then install windoze 95
on a _clean_, freshly formatted disk and then shut down and re-install the
modem, _then_ the parts of w95 that need to will see the modem (remember, it's
a plug-n-pray modem that I have -like you'd said your friend's was). My
m'board
is supposed to be "Plug-n-Play" but in this case there are probably subtle
things that made it mostly plug-n-pray for sure.
Although I have some experience with installing PNP hardware onto w95/98
systems, it seems to me that while installing the w95 onto a previously
hardware configured box, the PNP majic of the system will not correctly detect
and install the PNP hardware into the new system. Maybe this is old hat to some
of you that had come against this problem, but it's new to me as I'm not one to
buy lots of hardware stuff to play with and try out and otherwise tinker with
my machines. The machines are tools for me and I put my money resources into
s/w tools I need or my old radio collection (as Hans F. and Wm. Donzelli can
attest ;)
BTW, I'm using w95 OSR-2 also. 8-24-96 is the majority of file dates on the
distribution.
This is just a suggestion that you may have run into the same type of PNP
conflict, which you may have guessed already, and an offer of a possible
solution.
Good luck!
Regards, Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/