Hi there,



I have just come across a rather disturbing and annoying problem regarding

compatibility between New Couriers, and older Sportsters, and I was wondering

if this is a known problem, and whether it can be fixed properly.



The scenario is this - my ISP recently upgraded 3/4 of their modems

from an asortment of miscellaneous modems to a set of 36 brand new rackmount

USR Couriers. Sounds like a great idea, right? Wrong!



It now appears that any older TI chipset modem, including older Sportsters,

the Dynalink 33.6K Sportster clone (which I have), and possibly (but not

yet confirmed) older Couriers as well.



The symptoms are a successful connection up to the login prompt of the

dial-up script, and then in the blink of an eye, an immediate disconnection.



ATI6 stats on my modem report "Disconnect reason is DISC received".



Either modem has no difficulty connecting to other chipset brand modems.



I have personally observed the problem on both my TI chipset Dynalink, and

a genuine 3 month old V/F/D 33.6K Sportster.



After the techo at the ISP contacting USR and at first getting denials that

there was any such problem with these Couriers, USR suddenly did an about

face and more or less said, "oh yes, there is a slight incompatibility

problem between these new Couriers and older Sportsters - but its a bug in

the older Sportsters." They proceeded to give him a fix which was ATS15=128.



I have tried ATS15=128 and it does indeed completely eliminate the immediate

disconnection problem - but there is a price - it disables V42bis compression,

forcing the modem to use inferior MNP5 compression.



Another serious problem from the point of view of the ISP is that the
"fix"

(which is really only a workaround) must be applied at the _calling_ end,

IE the customers end. This is something of a PR nightmare for them, trying

to explain to customers with Sportsters who have been able to connect

perfectly until now, that they must now alter their initialization string

to downgrade their compression setting, because there is a bug in THEIR

modem.



This whole situation seems almost to the point of a scandal on USR's part -

that they could release a new model of Courier that cannot connect to their

_own brand_ of modems, never mind other brands! Not to mention denying the

problem existed in the first place, but then miraculously pulling a "cure"

out of a hat that seems to work. (Indicating that they did know about it)



Here are some of the ATI screens from the offending Couriers:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

7721



USRobotics Courier V.Everything Settings...



   B0  C1  E0  F1  Q1  V1  X7

   BAUD=115200 PARITY=N  WORDLEN=8

   DIAL=PULSE  ON HOOK   TIMER



   &A3  &B1  &C1  &D2  &G0  &H1  &I0  &K1 
&L0  &M4  &N0

   &P0  &R2  &S0  &T4  &X0  &Y1



   S00=001  S01=000  S02=043  S03=013  S04=010  S05=008  S06=002  S07=060

   S08=002  S09=006  S10=007  S11=070  S12=050  S13=000  S14=000  S15=000

   S16=000  S17=000  S18=000  S19=000  S20=000  S21=010  S22=017  S23=019

   S24=150  S25=005  S26=001  S27=000  S28=008  S29=020  S30=000  S31=000

   S32=009  S33=000  S34=032  S35=000  S36=000  S37=000  S38=000  S39=000

   S40=000  S41=000  S42=126  S43=200  S44=015  S45=000  S46=000  S47=000

   S48=000  S49=000  S50=000  S51=000  S52=000  S53=000  S54=064  S55=000

   S56=000  S57=000  S58=000



   LAST DIALED #:



USRobotics Courier V.Everything Configuration Profile...



Product type           US/Canada Rackmount

Options                HST,V32bis,Terbo,VFC,V34+

Fax Options            Class 1/Class 2.0

Clock Freq             20.16Mhz

Eprom                  256k

Ram                    32k



Supervisor date        05/07/96

DSP date               11/29/95



Supervisor rev         1.0.7

DSP rev                1.2.7



--------------------------------------------------------------------------



And here is the ATI7 screen of my TI chipset Dynalink - one of the affected

modems:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------



ati7

Configuration Profile...



Product type           US/Canada Internal

Options                V32bis,V.FC,V.34+

Fax Options            Class 1/Class 2.0

Clock Freq             92.0Mhz

Eprom                  256k

Ram                    64k



EPROM date             8/13/96

DSP date               8/13/96



EPROM rev              2.51

DSP rev                2.51



OK



--------------------------------------------------------------------------



Does anyone have any experience with this problem? Is this an isolated

incident, or is it a widespread problem? I havn't heard about it until

I experienced it myself. A quick browse on the USR web site reveals no

mention of any such problem, although I didnt check everwhere. (I find

their web site a pain in the *** to navigate, and also very slow for some

reason)



What do you think, folks? Am I going mad? ;-)



Regards,

Simon



... Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

--- FMail/386 1.02