On Jan 28 23:09 96, Paul Edwards of 3:711/934.9 wrote:

PE> Hi folks, I have been given a USR Courier V34+ for trial for 
PE> 1 month.  1 week has passed already, and would like to know 
PE> if anyone has suggestions, which I can try in the course of 
PE> the next 3 weeks.  At this stage, I will not be touching the 
PE> USR Courier with a barge pole.  I had far less problems with
PE> my Spirit Thunder, which I knew for a fact was a load of
PE> rubbish.  At this stage I am looking at getting either a
PE> Netcomm or a Yum Cha V34 modem.

PE> Oh, my Spirit Thunder died in a lightning attack, which is
PE> the reason for the upgrade to V34.  Some of these problems
PE> should be able to be verified by anyone with a USR Courier,
PE> e.g. numbers 1 and 5.  For you to get the others you need
PE> to be called by the same people who are calling me.  I have
PE> sent the people who are getting the problems off to hassle
PE> some other USR Courier owners that I know of.  Note that I
PE> didn't have any of these problems with my Spirit Thunder.
PE> I had a different set of problems with it.



PE>               Problems with USR Courier V34+

PE> Note: Supervisor Date = 1995-07-18
PE>       DSP Date        = 1995-07-05

That's the latest Australian set.

PE> 1. After receiving an "AT" command at a particular baud rate,
PE> the modem does not adjust to that baud rate, and instead stays
PE> at the rate at the time of last "AT&W".

That's common to nearly every high performance modem I know of nowdays. 
Any change in the locked baud rate to the UART requires a fresh AT&W.  

Complicated by the fact that there are circumstances where the USR isn't
too happy to accept a ATZ.

PE> 2. Regularly getting 26400 connects with a Netcomm instead of
PE> 28800.

Such be life.  Is that line capable of 28800 with negligible errors?

PE> 3. Modem is initiating a retrain straight after each connect,
PE> even with V32bis modems.  I would expect that the initial
PE> negotiation would have figured that out, no need for a retrain
PE> on every single bloody call.  Yet the ATI6 does not show that
PE> a retrain was requested.

SOP.  This is the major reason for success where other modems fail - the
USR is designed to connect VERY conservatively - then train up if
indications warrant. Training going on during connect phase isn't all that
reliable.  If you watch it, eventually you'll see it -not- train up - the
line wasn't good enough.

PE> 4. Having problems talking to a Supra modem, 50% dropouts where
PE> previously there were none (with a Spirit Thunder modem).

Supra on v34 or VFC?

PE> 5. AT&F1 sets S56 equal to 16 instead of the default of 0 listed
PE> in the manual.

Confirm.  There's a fair amount more of that as well.

AT$S and ATS$ are interesting - online manual, a fair bit more uptodate.

PE> 6. A Spirit Thunder is getting connects with me at 2400 bps far
PE> more often than 19200.  1200 bps connects too.

El yuck.  This -could- be the Spirit.  Your setup on your Thunder got 19200
to my USR regular as clockwork for some time.  Setup or hardware.  What did
that site get while you had a Thunder online?  (I'd suspect excellent..)

PE> 7. USR to USR connect failed due to a retrain failure.  Also,
PE> USR to USR is showing 21600/2400 as the connect rate.

This one is being chased.  It's not the USR, it's telstra.  Reasonably
recent, and it's the same thing that used to plague us during the early VFC
days when "sudden disconnect" was the order of the day.  Wildly
split baud rates are the hallmark of the fault at the moment.  You'll find
this happening to top quality lines - good connect, transfer rolling at
high speed - sudden halt, frantic attempts to retrain, all fail, exit with
one direction only affected, and it at some ridiculously low speed as the
last attempted.

Seen many times now.   9600 baud and down seem to be immune to it.  14400
is on the edge - 28800 and up see it regularly.   Note - when the fault is
triggered, even 2400 isn't possible in that direction on that line.

PE> 8. Failed to connect to Hayes modem at all.  Very weird sounds
PE> coming out.  No problem when I was using a Spirit.  This actually
PE> happened with an older revision of the ROMs, and cannot confirm
PE> at this stage whether it still exists because the modem was 
PE> taken offline so that I could connect.

Unknown situation.  I connect Hayes/USR nearly every day, both VFC and V34
models.  Possibly setup, possibly defective modem, possibly very early
Rockwell set with major bugs still present.   And possibly a wierd bug
still in the USR - hard to tell without definitive tests.

PE> 9. A Netcomm modem (PCMCIA or something) gets connects of 1200, 
PE> 2400, 14400 and 28800 with me.  This also happened with the
PE> older ROMs, and the caller has not called since I changed ROMs,
PE> so cannot confirm the continued existance of this problem.

????

Regards,
Dave Hatch.

--- Msgedsq/2 3.20