Did the Mobo get hit along with the modem ?

[chipdip]

Here's the story;

Asus A7V mobo, AMD K7 600mhz, 128 ram, 20gigHD, Xpert98 SBLive, CDrom50x, Windows Millenium, USRobotics 56k modem.

My buddy buys this computer last January 2001 at ABC computers Inc. My friend lives on a farm several miles from the nearest town. Last August and during one of natures spectacular lightning and thunder my friend unwisely chose to remain online and his connection was abruptly cut off. Every time he would try to connect he would get through sometimes but rarely higher than one third the speed he had grown accustomed to.

ABC Computers ( not the real name ) put in a new modem and the problem persisted. My friend called up his local telnet to inform them of the problem thinking the line might have been damaged. The telnet rep came by and tested the line with his laptop using my friend's isp account, ID and pass. The connection with his laptop was pretty good, much better than the full size computer's connection.

I have brought his computer to my house and got great bandwidth using his equipment and someone else took the computer to his house and got a great connection. Other computers worked fine at my friends house using his phone line. If the phone line at my friend's farm is bad why do other computers connect well there and if it's the modem or computer why do they work well when connected anywhere else. Kind of spooky. All necessary checks were performed by my friend's isp CDE Communications (not the real name ) Inc and I was using his isp to connect from my house. What are we missing, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks...Chipdip.

 

[edfair]

Based on my 3 days in the industry so far I will make a guess. But remember , modem setup and usage is art, not science.
Phone lines are protected on both ends by overvoltage protectors. Every hit the line takes changes those protectors. When protectors start to go bad you get noise.
Modems are not happy with noise. Some modems are less happy with noise than other modems. And since modems talk to each other to find the speed they both can handle, any change in the noise level will affect what speeds they can use.
It sounds like your friend has reached a point that the modem he is using won't work at the same speed he previously had. Rather than beat his head against a pillar he would be better advised to find a duplicate of one that works at the higher speed. And if his RBOC is like mine, anything above 9600 is a bonus. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[chipdip]

Thanks very much for your input edfair. In four years at my present residence our telco came to replace blown overvoltage protectors. I was under the impression that they simply blew open or they would operate normally. A partially damaged protector might be involved. I will ask my friend to check it out. Thanks again for the rapid response Chipdip

 

[edfair]

Spent 4 weeks with bellsouth problems where the CO set were bad enough that the ringer circuitry thought that somebody had answered and quit ringing but not bad enough for the control circuitry to stop trying. Would ring once. Answering machine kept waiting for 3 more rings. And customers kept telling me that my answering machine didn't answer.
Took setting 2 phones next to each other and telling the tech to make the bad one ring more than once. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.