DA> Saturday January 20 1996 17:59, Dave Hatch wrote to Deon Attard:

DA>>> Netcomm m34f, it'll normally connect at 26400 if the lines arn't
DA>>> real good and then train its way up.

DH>> Sounds about right.   The Rockwell set has the capability of
DH>> specifying something I'd term "aggressiveness" in line
speed selection
DH>> - good idea, and works a beauty.

DA> Any idea what the command/s register is to enable the
"aggression" :-)
DA> Sounds like an experiment to me..

I've not seen anything in any Rockwell modem's manual to indicate they have
this ability - though as Dave says, it must be there, deep down anyway.

 DH> On the Netcomm, the hardware's there.  They do their own
 DH> software, so it probably will take a bit of poking about to
 DH> find what they call it, or if they've implemented the
 DH> manual adjust feature.

 DH> On my Hayes v34, it's in S108, labeled Signal Quality
 DH> Select, range of 0 - 3,
 DH> with 0 putting up with anything, and 3 demanding perfection
 DH> on pain of instant train down to the next lower speed.
 DH> That's what the manual sez.  The practice is a bit gentler
 DH> - under some circumstances you can't see the effect at all.
 DH>  You need a noisy line, under some pretty precise ranges of
 DH> "noisy" before it is an effective tool, IMHO.

Yes, I don't know why all modems don't allow the 'aggressiveness' of trying
to stay at a certain speed, rather than fallback more readily, adjustable. 
Particularly when it can make the difference between a stable connect, or
not, or save sessions from being littered with retrains and/or rate shifts,
which can do weird things to file transfer protocols sometimes.

We discovered, after digging through the rather cryptic descriptions in the
manual, that playing with this on the Motorola Lifestyle made the
difference between getting an error-corrected connect or not, albeit at an
about 2400bps lower speed, with a rack of Netcomm V.34 modems at the local
uni.  A solid 24000 with LAPM is much better than 28800, without.

I've been playing with this feature for years with my DPX-596; it's often
made all the difference between complete failure and at least limited
success on connections to some modems on particularly noisy old exchange
equipment.

 DH> Still - try.  Nothing to loose.  Snoop in the Netcomm
 DH> online manual, and see if any of the descriptions match
 DH> this function, and play, if they do.

Any reports on how to do this with the Netcomms (or any other
Rockwell-chipped modems) will certainly be snipped for future reference
here ..

Cheers, Ian

--- MaltEd 1.0.b5