Re: modem config.............

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 1 Nov 1999, Matthew Collins wrote:

> >voltages involved with the telephone system. That's why you have to
> >measure out the creep distance between your modem and your other cards
> >(has anyone here done this? No?).
> Eh? Creep distance, whats that then.

Creep distance is to do with the AC voltages on the modem. A modem is
connected to an ~40VAC line, and as such has to be a certain distance away
from other cards, for fear of zapping them with nastiness. There are two
creep distances: the distance between the cards through the air, and the
distance between the cards going 'on land' as it were, down the card,
across the board, up to the other card. It's about 2cm/4cm IIRC... it's in
your manual, probably.

> I stand by my original statement
> though. All the internal modems I've seen (Years ago, before WinModems
> were even invented) had the black sleave. The only ones I've seen that
> didn't had the red triangle on the box.

Yes, I wasn't disagreeing with that. A lot of BABT approved modems do have
covers, pretty much all Winmodems do. My point was that it was more likely
to be a winmodem if it had a cover, because not *all* int modems have
them. Simple question of probabilities.. but really, all cards should be
shielded, esp. if they're running in a non-native electrical environment
(i.e. modems, networks cards, etc.)

> I stand corrected, sorry for giving misleading advise, but I thought
> that I'd read somewhere that WinModems needed PCI bus, because they
> were shifting more data across the bus. Sorry If I mislead anybody.

They certainly do shift a lot of data. I would say, given the option, I'd
rather have a PCI one. I doubt whether or not you could have both a
winmodem network card on the isa bus: anyone out there with this
configuration? I'd be *extremely* surprised if you could do that have a
graphics card on the isa bus as well ;))

> >know about this (someone will correct me, I'm sure), but I wouldn't think
> >a winmodem will respond to the hayes command set. If they *do*, I think
> >that's a rotten design decision ;))
> Not releaseing the Specs or the source code to ANY driver is a rotten
> design descision :), but I think that argument has been flogged to
> death by now.

Yes ;)) I was more referring to the point that the hayes command set
should allow you to initiate calls, and given that a winmodem can't do
that itself, it shouldn't have any hayes implementation whatsoever. I'm in
two minds whether or not they should release linux drivers: sure, we could
have cheap modems, but then, I would never, ever, ever, ever recommend
anyone buy a winmodem ever ever ever. They just bog down your machine.

Cheers,

Alex.

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