Hello John!

Monday December 30 1996 00:32, John Piper wrote to All:

 > Drummond (who AFAIK is running the same SDL as I am) and Russell Brooks,
 > both Courier owners, it's evident that 33600 connects are possible with the
 > V.Everything. Simple: it can't be a modem/SDL problem.

Not necessarily. Not an SDL problem, but possibly a modem problem. Read on ..

I have two Supras, a V.FC, and a V.34. Only the V.34 is on the BBS these days.
Running a reasonably recent beta ROM, which has 33600. (The release version
seems to be buggy and to be avoided, rushed before Christmas is the
theory.) Anyway, the V.34's been pretty unreliable; about 20% success rate
connecting (at all) to my fido hub's Maestro V.34 or his V.FC. The V.FC is
rock solid, connects to either of his modems just fine. Likewise the V.34
has some stupid problems connecting to the Dataplex 28800s at uni.

So yesterday, I decided to swap the datapumps, and obviously the firmware.
Other people seem to have no problem with the V.34 Supra, so I suspected
mine might be actually faulty somewhere. The old V.FC is now V.34, and it
goes great -- 100% success on two polls to my hub (one to the V.FC, one to
the V.34), and 100% success rate on two calls to the uni's Dataplexen.
Hence, your modem may have a slightly dodgy analog section or some problem
similar to mine which makes 33600 an impossibility.

Slight negative side to this experiment; Supra seem to have changed the
flash interface in successive versions of the V.34 firmware. I have version
1.4 (33600), and can't downgrade to 1.3 using either the flasher program
(says it doesn't have data for the modem), or the xmodem upload (the modem
aborts 25% of the way through). Unfortunately, I can't get the V.FC
firmware into it either. Which means that I currently have one dead modem,
needing a V.34 datapump or some injection of V.FC firmware. (Could be
difficult, since the ROM is a surface-mount flash chip.) Argh.

Sorry, can't better your 33600 record;

* 05 Jan 12:14:59 BINK Processing node 3:712/841{at}fidonet -- Lateline Bbs
: 05 Jan 12:14:59 BINK Dialing 02-9579-6564
# 05 Jan 12:15:26 BINK Carrier 31200Tx/31200Rx
# 05 Jan 12:15:26 BINK Protocol: Alt
# 05 Jan 12:15:26 BINK Compression: None
# 05 Jan 12:15:26 BINK Connect 31200/Arq
* 05 Jan 12:15:31 BINK Lateline BBS (FMail Australia) (3:712/841{at}fidonet)


Regards,
Hamish

--- GoldED/P32 2.42.G1219+