Do Modems Need A Driver?

About four years ago the frustration of seeing countless advertisements containing www.somethingorother.com and hearing friends incessantly talking of e-mail (of which I knew nothing) finally got to me enough to do something about it.  I was very new to computers (you might say I was a virtual virgin) but I nonetheless decided to join the computing revolution and get myself a machine.

 

As it happened, just at that time, my Father was selling a Packard Bell 486.  It had a 33mhz processor, 16MB RAM, a 500MB hard drive, no sound card and no modem (I felt grateful that it had a graphics card).  He wanted £450 for it (I don't know what that its in $'s but it's about 20,000,000 LIRA).  I agreed to take it off his hands on a no deposit, zero interest, I'll never pay you unless I win the lottery kind of agreement (at least, that's how I saw it).  He assured me that the system was more than adequate for my uses and said he only wanted to sell it as he had bought himself a new Compaq.  This wasn't good enough so I asked about upgrading.  Well, the old man came up with the goods and when I collected it it now had, a 1.2 GB hard drive, 24MB RAM AND a modem.

 

With me so far?  OK.  Well, I got the bug and was so infatuated I attended a course on computer installation and maintenance.  Doing this made me realize (I know you spell that with a "z") that the 486 was a pile of dog dirt (if he thinks I'm paying him he must be stupid - sorry Dad).  So, I pulled it to bits and bought a case, a motherboard with Pentium S 200mhz processor and a bit of extra RAM.  As I didn't have much money I used the RAM I already had, the sound card, the monitor and the modem.

 

Once I had assembled everything I held my breath, hit the power switch and waited for boot up heaven.... and do you know what?  It worked!  The only problem that I had was that Windows installed a default driver for the modem.  I didn't bother too much about this as everything seemed to work OK, the modem was a Rockwell 28kpbs but it connected at 31/33kbps depending on how it felt - I should have known there was something wrong then.

 

A little later I was adding some extra RAM and took the modem out to provide easier access.  It was then that I studied the markings and noticed that one label had "RCVDL56ACFW/SP" written on it, the "56" in particular caught my eye as it indicated to me that this surely must be a 56kpbs modem - faster surfing here we come! 

 

Off to www.driverguide.com I go and download the first thing I see with the aforementioned number on.  No go.  I try the next one (there are several), still no go.  I try everything I can find on the page and waste a full day with no success.  The next day I search around the other driver links and find something that informs me that Rockwell do not actually make modems they only manufacture components for them - Ah Ha!  So that's the problem - all I was doing was downloading drivers for modems with similar chipsets.  Away I go again and try countless drivers (oh the floppies I have filled) all to no avail.  I eventually come across something that tells me I can identify my modem by using the FCC ID search, the problem is my modem was made in the UK and this only covers US versions - DAMN!  Another link takes me to the British version which is the BABT site but this place is so stupid that it needs you to enter four sets of numbers from your modem.  WHICH FOUR SETS?  MY CARD HAS NINE SETS OF NUMBERS.  How am I supposed to know which to use?  The combinations that are possible must be incredible.

 

So to cut a very long story short I have tried every driver page that Alta Vista, Guiding Light, Lycos, Snap and Yahoo have to offer and I am still connecting at 30kpbs even though I have a 56k modem.  I have e-mailed BABT but all I got was some dork saying that they need more information regarding my problem - even though I gave them everything I had!

 

A final point is to say that, while searching the various notice boards I did see a lot of messages saying that people had looked for a long time to locate the correct driver, so I'm not on my own, judging by their comments a lot of them were clearly elated with their finds.  Not me.

 

Paul Smith

 

England