D. Vujaklija said:
Offtopic? Yes, but asus notebook is in this case so maybe someone can
help me:
I have working problems with the modem HSP56 MR in asus notebook L4000H.
Connection speed is always above 50k but during the online work modem
stoping with transfering data. Lets say, through every 60 sec modem stop
for 20-25 sec and then continue to work.
Drivers are new, o/s is win XP pro SP1.
In the advanced settings on modem properties I tried to reduce / limit
connetion speed (through registers s34 and s37, command AT N0 S37=14 S34
= 9 to 13) but without success.
Also, I tried to change COM ports from default COM3 to other ports,
unsuccessfuly.
Modem share IRQ 10 with 3 other devices (LAN, sound and VGA) so I
presume that can be a problem. On resource tab option to manually set
IRQ is greyed so I cant change it. I tried to uninstall other devices on
IRQ 10 and reinstall again but result is the same, windows put them back
on same IRQ.
Any advices?
I think the chip used for HSP56 is PCtel (based on looking at the
driver INF file). PCtel sold its modem business to Conexant (who
themsleves are former Rockwell, makers of K56 modem chips). I get the
impression Conexant bought the business, in order to crush it.
HSP stands for host signal processing, meaning there is a good
chance the modem implementation is a "winmodem", and relies on the
processor in your laptop to do all the work. So, if anything interrupts
the processor while it is doing signal processing, to implement the
modem functions in software, the connection will suffer, and perhaps
your modem and the ISP are renegociating the link.
http://www.conexant.com/support/pctel_faqs.html#q2
http://www.conexant.com/support/pctel_driverdownload.jsp
If you enter "hsp56 mr" at groups.google.com, there will be a number
of references to available drivers. I cannot say whether these
correspond to your hardware, because I cannot find enough info on the
hardware side of things.
So, you could go searching for drivers - Asus has some on their download
web site. There are also many "in the wild".
The following links suggest some changes to reduce the computing load
caused by the soft modem:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]
http://www.zoltrix.com/support_html/modem/HSP-QA.HTM
The "mr" in the name, implies Modem Riser, as in AMR. This way of
doing a soft modem, uses the equivalent of AC97 audio, to listen
and talk to the phone line. The only thing you find in the computer,
is a couple of small chips that interface and isolate the telephone
line voltages from your computer.
Something that doesn't add up, is if you look at the INF file in the
Asus driver, it has a PCI Vendor ID, implying it is the PCI version
of HSP56. Yet the name string of HSP56 MR implies a Modem Riser
implementation. If it really is a PCI chip inside your computer,
then, as you have already surmised, improving interrupt latency by
giving a standalone IRQ will help. Looking at the software manual,
there is nothing in the BIOS to do that. In all probability, the
IRQ signal is physically wired to other devices, and that is why
this cannot be changed. So, maybe the only way to help the modem,
is to reduce the other loading on the CPU (as the posting above
suggests, reducing the number of colors on your display, might
make more memory bandwidth available for computing).
The following web link takes you to a snapshot of the PCTel website
before the modem business was bought. The web.archive.org website
takes snapshots of other websites:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010801142642/www.pctel.com/products/Analog/analog.htm
Personally, I think Winmodems are evil (couldn't you tell
The quickest way to fix this, is to find a hardware modem (no CPU
cycles wasted converting data to sound for the phone). I like
external modems with RS-232 on them, because then the modem
manufacturer cannot cheat. For a laptop, maybe you can find a
PC Card modem that has a data pump in it (a non-Winmodem) ?
I don't think there is one honest businessman in the whole
modem industry.
Good luck,
Paul
