USR faxmodem a bust!

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> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Sep 24, 1998 at 06:49:48PM +0200, Steeve wrote:
> > Ok, I'm about to give up on this bloody modem.  Could anyone
> > please recommend to me a modem that *does* actually send
> > and receive faxes?
> 
> Oh, please.  This question is asked about once a week on this list.  For
> example, the USR Courier series is very good.  Multitechs have good and
> bad firmware versions.  Same for ZyXEL.  ELSA is ok, but not as good as
> USR.

Perhaps it's asked for a good reason.  A list of well-behaved modems
on your web site would probably alleviate that.  No offense, really.
Since I've only been on the list for a week ... :)

> > The modem is a USR model 568700 updated to 4.10
> 
> Huh?  Interesting model number :-)

Really, this is how they refer to this modem on the 3com
site.  The 3com web site generally sucks, IMHO.  This
is part of the reason why I ask about a reliable fax
modem, evne though I've heard that the couriers are good.

Should I trust these people? 

> > Thanks Gert for your help regarding this USR modem.  I
> > upgraded the firmware (a 3.5 hour process, involving
> > moving the modem to a Win95 box, reconfiguring the dip
> > switches, downloading a 1.4Mb Windoze program for zapping
> > the firmware, dialing 3com to download a 140Kb image - I
> > managed to dup this file before the setup deleted it in
> > case anyone needs it, not that it does anything - rebooting
> > Win95 about 8 times in all -- gawd I hate that OS.
> 
> Weird.  Upgrading the USR Courier series is really easy (get about
> 200kbyte, run an .EXE file under DOS or upload a .XMD file with X-Modem
> and you're done)

That is exactly what I expected before I stared. I spent
over two hours browsing their bloody site and found
only the windoze and macintrash updaters.  I couldn't
find an ftp site of upgradable firmware.  I had to
download the firmware upgrade via a long distance call.

> > The resulting attempts to fax are included below, as well
> > as the output from mid, as you requested.  The most
> > common failures for this modem are in these two sends.
> > The first fails with FHS+54 after the page has been sent.
> > The second fails as you previously described by not
> > obeying the remote modem's transmission speed.
> [..]
> > 09/24 12:22:59 yS3  page complete, 22684 bytes sent
> > 09/24 12:22:59 yS3  sending DLE '.'
> > 09/24 12:23:17 yS3  connection hangup: '+FHS:54'
> > 09/24 12:23:17 yS3   (No response to EOP repeated 3 times)
> 
> This *could* be a line noise or G3 file generation problem or something
> along that lines, one would need to know if and how the data arrived.

Unlikly to be a noise problem since the phone lines are
in the universty only a few feet apart.  I've mentionned befoer
that I'm concernd about the 'quality' of the g3 files that
I have.  Perhaps some *good* g3 files could be provided with
the distribution for testing?

> [..]
> > 09/24 12:25:29 yS3  fax_send: 'AT+FDT'
> > 09/24 12:25:29 yS3  fax_wait_for(CONNECT)
> > 09/24 12:25:29 yS3   fax_wait_for: string 'AT+FDT'
> > 09/24 12:25:29 yS3   fax_wait_for: string '+FCS:0,3,0,2,0,0,0,0'
> > 09/24 12:25:29 yS3  transmission par.: '+FCS:0,3,0,2,0,0,0,0'
> > 09/24 12:25:36 yS3   fax_wait_for: string '+FCS:0,3,0,2,0,0,0,0'
> > 09/24 12:25:36 yS3  transmission par.: '+FCS:0,3,0,2,0,0,0,0'
> > 09/24 12:25:42 yS3   fax_wait_for: string '+FCS:0,3,0,2,0,0,0,0'
> > 09/24 12:25:42 yS3  transmission par.: '+FCS:0,3,0,2,0,0,0,0'
> > 09/24 12:25:50 yS3   fax_wait_for: string '+FHS:25'
> > 09/24 12:25:50 yS3  connection hangup: '+FHS:25'
> 
> And *this* is the well-known USR negotiation bug.  I'll show the log
> file to my contacts at USR, and complain :-)
> 
> > testing for modem on /dev/ttyS3 with 38400 bps...
> > >>> ATI
> > ATI
> > 5601
> 
> Thanks for all the data.
> 
> > FLASH date             8/10/98
> > FLASH rev              4.10.0
> > 
> > DSP date               8/10/98
> > DSP rev                4.10.0
> 
> Fairly new firmware, but still broken.  *Sigh*.  Not enough complaints
> from the user community.

Fairly new indeed.  These people DO NOT RESPOND to user queries.
Worse than the idiots at iomega, as far as I can tell.

-- 
  steeve@eps.mcgill.ca                     Earth and Planetary Sciences
        :wq                  *Ovid*                SysAdmin
            Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intelligor illis