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4780 modem nightmare

post #1 of 6
5/20/04 at 9:17pm
Thread Starter 
I just purchased a 4780 about a month ago and I am very pleased with everything except this problem I am having with the modem:

whenever I try to dial my local ISP number, I get a sound towards the beginning of the handshake that sounds more like a fax handshake than a modem and then I get a message saying the remote host did not respond. I have tried everything imaginable to remedy this. I have called earthlink(my ISP) pctorque tech support, as well as sager tech support. I even had my machine replaced by sager and I still have the same problem. My friend who lives in the same town as me has no trouble dialing into earthlink on his compaq. I went over to his house and tried to dial earthlink from his phone line but I got the same problem.

here is the wierdest part:
I picked up my replacement machine personally from Sager and the good folks there had me try to dial both a local Los Angeles dial up number for earthlink as well as the number I dial here in Arizona. No problems at all. After this happened I was sure I would return home and have no problem. So it made me think that it was something to do with my phone company?? But then why would my friend be able to dial up with his compaq?

needless to say this all is extremely frustrating!!!

any and all help would be greatly appreciated!!!

thanks:
cF
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post #2 of 6
5/21/04 at 4:28am
Are there different access numbers for your area? I would suggest trying another access number to hopefully get a different rack of modems to connect to. Some modems are just picky about connecting with certain types of other modems. Before digging through init strings and more complicated stuff like that, try dialing some alternate numbers and see if you have any luck that way.
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post #3 of 6
5/21/04 at 3:23pm
Thread Starter 
unfortunately there is only one local number available to me. I thought that it might be a non compatibility issue with earthlink's modems but when I tried to dial the same number (my local number here in AZ) from out of state (from Sager in Los Angeles) i connected no problem.

adding to the wierdness:
when I unistall the modem driver and then reinstall I am able to connect, but only once. As soon as I disconnect, I cannot reconnect unless I do the same work around: uninstalling the modem driver and then reinstalling it.

What is a init string?

thanks Turtle
:
cF
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post #4 of 6
5/21/04 at 4:12pm
Wow, that is indeed very weird. I thought off-the-wall bizarre problems like that only happened to me. Anyhow, init strings are just low level commands to send to the modem which you can use to tweak its behavior. But before you get into that, have you tried updating the modem's drivers? The ones that shipped with my 4780 weren't the most recent by far, and I actually had to upgrade because the modem seemed to be hard locking the system. After I upgraded, no more crashes.

The modem in my 4780 is an SMlink MDC modem. I'm pretty sure that yours is the same. You can get updated WinXP drivers for it here.

Hopefully that'll fix your problem. Good luck!
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post #5 of 6
5/21/04 at 9:55pm
Thread Starter 
After I installed the driver from I was abl to login. Then after I disconnect I could not log in. This time instead of a fax-like handshake, it would get to the part of the handshake where my computer needs to send info, but it just doesn't. The plot thickens.


:
cF
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post #6 of 6
5/22/04 at 7:45pm
Thread Starter 
After I installed the driver from I was abl to login. Then after I disconnect I could not log in. This time instead of a fax-like handshake, it would get to the part of the handshake where my computer needs to send info, but it just doesn't. The plot thickens.


:
cF
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