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Soft modem PCTel ISA 8 bit, need help

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by panteev 1 view

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My friend has a modem. It is ISA 8 bit card without any jumpers. There are no signs of manufacturer, only stickers ?Super?, ?Made in China?, and one sign looks like model number: ?VC-8237 Rev 1.00?. I have experience looking for drivers in Internet,but I did not find drivers for this model. Almost forgot, there is no FCC ID code. All I found is web page of PCTel, manufacturer of main chip: http://www.pctel.com/drivers_download.htm
There I read that it is a SOFT MODEM, and there are even generic drivers for chips they made. But I don?t know, which driver I should use for my chip, PCT288-IA. The one I tried didn?t help me: after installation it asks number of COM-port my modem is attached to. But there is no new COM port after installationof modem, neither virtual COM port after installation of driver.
May be I do something wrong, or may be someone knows where can I take the driver I need.
One more thing: modem worked fine in my friend?s computer until he decided to delete Windows 98 and install Windows ME. Now I can?t launch it neither on his, nor on any other computer.

5 replies

by panteev

It's not very old - March 1998 is the date of manufacturing. I would accept your advice if you attach $20 to it :-)

by eujay

Part of the problem here is that you are using a "Soft" modem. Most modems, especially at $20 are software driven. They need to interact with the Operating system to make them work. Therefore you are dependent on having the driver to make the modem go.

A hardware modem on the other hand does not need to interact with the operating system to work. A hardware modem once installed is just like another part of the PC. Hard Modems may need a driver in windows but if they do you can use one of thewindows standard ones.

The drawback is the price. Most hard modems are more expensive than soft modems. I bought one from ebay a few months back for $40.

Advantages are that a hard modem runs faster than a soft modem and with less fuss. On myold soft modem which was rated at 56K my connection speed never rose above 28.8K This is because the Soft modem eats up processor time and runs slow. The hard modem, also rated at 56K, runs at 44.8K and is noticeably faster. Also if you want to run Linux you will need to replace with a Hard modem. Linux only recognizes hardware modems.

email me if you have questions. Hope this helps.

by panteev

Well, I accept it not because it solved my problem but because it was very specific and full answer.
Though, this modem was replaced a while ago.

Thanks anyway

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