Intel from hell chip on winmodem

[rodeohog]

I purchased three winmodems for backup when I lost my modem. They are cheap winmodems, but I live in a rural area that only gets me 28K dialup connections anyhow. Two of these three had an Intel chip on them and the other had a PCTel chip. The Intel cards will not let windows load up, instead giving the error message "windows protection error" or to that effect. Cannot get into the computer until I remove this modem card. I have tried it in three computers, same results. Both cards act the same way. The PCTel loaded up okay. I only paid $5 for each card which is no big loss, but I am curious. Could it be these are defective chips or is there another explanation. (PS....no more cheap modems, I'm moving up to the $20 bracket ;-)


Using Win98, AMD cpu's, PCI modems, tried moving to different slots, reloaded windows and even reformatted and loaded windows clean, same results. Three different MB also.

rodeohog

 

[pansophic]

Are you putting more than one of them in the computer at a time? If so, you will definitely have problems (although I've never heard of them causing Windows to not load).

WinModems are controlled via a software driver that literally broadcasts on the PCI bus. This is nice, in that you don't have to put a PCI controller chip on the modem card, and that makes them cheap. On the other hand, if you put two of them in a computer, it is impossible to tell them apart, so only 1 has any chance of working, and it still may not.


pansophic

 

[JPCPB]

Greetings,

Could you be more specific about the "Intel chip" Winmodems? What make are they? - in other words, what chipset? (THAT is the key!).

Also, what is the make/model of your system and OS?

Here are some websites to check:

Modem Troubleshooting:

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble.asp

There are a number of articles on the above site for you to read (see the Chipset links and the Winmodems link bottom left-side and the "If the modem doesn't work at all" links at top right, to name a few).

This link is for a W98SE which hangs during boot with a PC-Tel Winmodem:

http://www.tech-heaven.com/forum/history/topic/1366.html

I know you said it's the "Intel chip" ones causing problems, but the troubleshooting steps are the same/similar.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[rodeohog]

Sorry for not being more specific. There is an INTEL sticker on top of the chip covering the more detailed info. I just peeled off the sticker and it reads as follows:

Ambient
MD3288 A
FF643-000 0220
Taiwan

So it is actually an Ambient chip under an Intel blanket. Only putting in one modem at a time, but both modems did the same "lockdown" to any of the computers I put them in. I am using Win 98 on all three computers, and each has a different motherboard in it (Mine is an ASUS A7V333 with AMD 1900, the others are a Gateway with an amd 400 I think, and the last one is a Tyan S1590 100 with AMD 400). All are using Win98.

Sticker on back of modem reads:

ENF656-GSW-INPR

Thanks for the links and help. I will check them out.