Modem Problem

sci0x

My friend has something wrong with their modem and can't figure out whats up.

At home, when she dials out with the modem it says no dial tone and she cant connect. She took the modem and computer to a computer shop and they could connect grand to the net on the computer. She took it home again and couldnt connect. So the modem is fine and she also used different cables so its no that prob either.

Any ideas?

BigEejit

disconnect answering machine and caller display phones etc and try again .... try connecting directly to the point where the phone comes into the house

ronanp

Gotta be the phone line then I guess. Make sure she is connecting directly into the phone line (no splitter), get any other devices off the line, disable call waiting. If that stupid eircom voicemail thingy is on, make sure there are no new messages and that an ordinary phone handset gives you a normal dial tone.

If thats all ok:

Try putting a comma in front of the phone number (slight delay before dialling)

Alternatively, try adding X0 to the modem string to ignore the lack of dial tone. How to do this depends on your OS:

Windows XP: Start-Settings-Control Panel-Phone & Modem Options-Modems-Properties-Advanced and put X0 in "Extra initialisation commands"

Its completely gone out of my head where this is in win98, but you should be able to find it from modems in the control panel.

sci0x

4got to say it also gives an error 680,

BoB_BoT

error 680 means no dial tone. silly question, have you checked the physical cable that connects the modem to the phone line?

sci0x

Yep thats fine

vibe666

is it a massive cable? anything over about 10 feet can give you a no dial tone if it's a poor quality cable.

personally i've had one over 50 feet working that i made out of cat5 cable, but that's beside the point.

can almost guarantee it's going to be a problem with tenuation on the line. basically the longer the cable gets the weaker the signal will be. while it might be ok when you plug a phone into it, a modem will see the signal as too weak and report no dial tone or error 680.

move the pc from where it is to where the main socket in the house is and try it with the shortest cable you have (pref. less than 6ft) and try again.

if its still not working call 1901 and get them to test the line. tell them you're having problems, but don't mention it's a modem problem or they'll send you straight to your isp. just tell them it's a very weak signal and your grannie has hearing problems and she can't hear anything when she's on the phone even with the volume up, and that you've noticed its been very quiet lately.

also, if you're in the middle of nowhere give up and move to the city, chances are its just a duff line and you'll probably never get it fixed.

sceptre

My 3com modem won't connect to the net unles there's a phone connected as well (I've modem and phone working through a wee splitter). Laptop only seems to want to connect when there's nothing between it and the wall. Could try the former.