DM> At one stage, I took home my work 486, and the same problem
DM> occurred again, ruling out either PC. But having a think about
DM> it, I retained the modem, and the modem cable, and the cable
DM> being one of those IDC DB25's could be the problem. They don't
DM> take too well to much flexing, especially at the outer conductors.

Sounds most likely. Certainly fits the symptoms fine.

DM> I'll replace it in the next day or two.

DM> Would this also account for the unsuccessful modem negotiation that
DM> occurs occasional  About one in 3 times, I get a failed connect.

No, the cable wont have any effect on that. Sounds like a completely
separate problem. If you only ever get that at home, and never at work,
thats not too surprising since the handshaking between the modems early
in the negotiation phase is quite crude, and some of it just uses tones,
so line noise or glitches in the line can make it fail.

Do you know what they have done about the phone system in your new
subdivision ?  You can get both extremes, a flash new exchange with
one of the best services available, or the use of pair gain systems on
existing cable plant that can provide the worse service around, even
with funky stuff like 32K ADPCM on the customer access network which
is hell on modems. Thats basically a system for multiplexing customer
circuits over a much smaller number of cable pairs where there is a
shortage of cable pairs. Really fucks up modems at the higher speeds.

Or you can have quite flash stuff like fibre optic to
the pillar with quite short runs of copper pairs too.

--- PQWK202