Yo! Hayes:
Friday March 07 1997 11:09, Hayes Support wrote to Bill Cheek:
 BC> HS>> If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
Oh oh..........
I just sent off the one Optima 288 under the RA number and situation that we 
discussed previously.  In it's place, I put in a second, twin Optima 288.  
The operating position is a BBS....dunno if I explained that before.
The "spare" Optima 288 that had no known problems was on my personal 
workstation; not the BBS.
It was the BBS Optima that had that peculiar failure mode where the fix was 
to turn it off and then back on.....  Now, with that history behind us, let's 
move forward.......
I woke up this morning to find the otherwise known good Optima, now on the 
BBS, to be successively calling a Tulsa node; failing to connect; hanging up; 
redialing and failing to connect; ad nauseum.........  It had been doing that
for a half-hour.  Same old problem as before.
Same fix.  All I did was turn the modem OFF and back ON.  I did not touch or 
reload the BBS/Mailer software.  Anyway, after the physical hardware reset, 
the Mailer redialed that Tulsa node......and made a perfect connection; 
transferred data; and hung up....just like it was supposed to do on the first 
try a half-hour before.
Okay, now this gives rise to the question of the first modem, now in 
shipment, actually being defective as we first thought.  At least, if it is, 
so too is the spare modem.  Duh......??  What now?
I am willing to consider the problem being elsewhere.....but for the life of 
me, I can't see where.  BBS and mailer software can be cranky and obtuse, as 
we all know.  However, in the past, before suspecting the modem, I tried 
shutting down the BBS/Mailer and reloading it.  I even tried shutting the 
machine down and rebooting from cold iron.  So long as I didn't turn the 
modem OFF and back ON, the problem remained.  So other variables seem to have 
been eliminated by this test protocol.
I have tried, including this morning, (before turning the modem OFF/ON), to 
just send a fresh init string to the modem from the BBS/Mailer package.  That 
never works, either.  Turning the modem OFF and back ON seems to be the only 
fix, and therefore, the problem appears to be confined to the modem.
But for two of them to be affected?  Both were upgraded recently as evidenced 
by AT-I3:
04-00938-542Z 12548 PASS
04-00939-542Z 12548 PASS
05BA 16683 PASS
05 AD 13625 PASS
OK
And the recent upgrades were inspired by this continuing problem, which 
existed before the upgrade.
Concluding this missive and reiterating history, the OFF/ON fix definitely 
cures the problem for periods of time anywhere from many hours to a week or 
even longer.  The failure mode always returns, though....and again, as 
always, the sure-fired fix is to turn it OFF and back ON without doing 
anything else.
Since both modems have been tried now, is there any chance it could be the 
power supply module?  I have not swapped it out yet.  Could it occasionally 
send a spike or a transient that would have the effect of putting the modem 
into that weird failure-to-connect mode?
Bill Cheek | Internet: bcheek@san.rr.com | Compu$erve: 74107,1176
Windows 95 Juggernaut Team | Microsoft MVP
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