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meerkt
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NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Mon Apr 30, 2018 9:20 pm

I have a Creative/ESS PCI modem for which I was unable to find NT6 x64 drivers. Searching by PCI id, Windows Update Catalog shows only XP drivers.

Another Creative/ESS modem does have a Vista x64 driver (which I assume would work on Win8), but it's incompatible with the one I have. Funnily, Creative's site says the driver is for "DI5791", which I think would be compatible, but the actual driver is for "DI5663".

Any generic way to get modems working? Or any known chips that do have NT6 x64 drivers?
 
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Mon Apr 30, 2018 9:45 pm

You'll probably have the easiest time getting an external modem working, if you've got a serial port to connect it to. Something like the good old USR Sportster or Courier modems, or their internal equivalents that are not Winmodems.

The best Winmodem (softmodem) I'm aware of were based on the Intel HaM chip (models 536 and 537) and spoke v.90 and/or v.92. There are sites out there which claim to have Win10-compatible drivers for same, so maybe that'll do. I remember back in the early '00s having an easy time getting one of those working in Linux, which was most unusual for a soft modem.
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meerkt
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 9:23 am

Blinkenlights were fun at the time, but I'd rather have it internal nowadays. :) For external, BTW, there are these USB modems that claim Win7+ support.

I think I may have an internal Sportster somewhere, but it's ISA.

I thought as a fallback maybe PCI passthru into a VM. But it seems not that straightforward. Maybe dual-booting? Yuck.
 
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 9:33 am

How much is your time worth? I briefly looked at eBay yesterday and IIRC someone had a PCI ex-Dell Intel 537 modem for $10.
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meerkt
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 9:56 am

Funny. An Intel guy hints here that there are no official Win10 drivers for the 537EPG, but there might still be, somewhere, drivers that work.
Thanks for the pointer. Never heard of Intel-based modems until now.
 
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 10:17 am

meerkt wrote:
I thought as a fallback maybe PCI passthru into a VM. But it seems not that straightforward. Maybe dual-booting? Yuck.

The biggest issue with PCI passthru seems to be that many consumer motherboards botch the VT-d/IOMMU BIOS support. If you've got a workstation-grade platform, you've probably got a much better chance of making it work.
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meerkt
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 10:23 am

Also, if the docs are up-to-date, VirtualBox doesn't do it on Windows hosts.
 
ludi
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 10:40 am

Saw this thread title on the front page Hot Threads and thought it had to be a world record necro.

In any case I had a few modems running under NT6 and Win9x back in the day. My recollection is that external is more manageable and reliable by far. You have to know how to configure the serial connection correctly, but having done that, you completely avoid the hassle of (a) locating software drivers, if even available; (b) getting said drivers to work correctly; and (c) the CPU overhead of a softmodem (which most of the cheaper 56k internal modems from that era, were).

Try the phrase "external 56k serial modem" on eBay and watch what happens.
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 10:47 am

ludi wrote:
In any case I had a few modems running under NT6 and Win9x back in the day.

NT6 was actually Vista/Win7/Win8. He's asking for modern (-ish) Windows drivers. I assume you meant NT4...
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ludi
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 10:50 am

just brew it! wrote:
ludi wrote:
In any case I had a few modems running under NT6 and Win9x back in the day.

NT6 was actually Vista/Win7/Win8. He's asking for modern (-ish) Windows drivers. I assume you meant NT4...

*whew*

Yes, that makes more sense. I assumed this was the mother of all retro-boxes.

In that case, how about something USB:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/56k-USB-Modem- ... SwnVZazl9r
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 5:43 pm

meerkt wrote:
Any generic way to get modems working?


Yes, but that would require it to be a true hardware modem and not a soft modem.

Edit:

Example hardware modem: https://www.usr.com/products/56k-dialup-modem/usr5610c/
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meerkt
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 6:33 pm

Yeah, I'll try one of these USB modems. Hopefully a decent chip. Too bad you can't shop-search by PCI or USB vendor and device ids. :) Though people seem to have drastically different experiences with the very same controller, not sure why.

I checked a few modems from an old cards box (the BIOS device ids table can be useful) but none had modern drivers. Strangely, a few cards didn't register at all. I thought at first maybe a bad card, but after the second and third... Don't know if a finicky slot or what.

By the way, Windows Update Catalog shows no new drivers for 536/537 Intels, but there are for quite a few Conexants (14f1) like 2702, 2f00, 2f30, 2f50, and more, including submodels.
 
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 9:13 pm

As a former owner of many modems starting at a 300 baud unit on my C-64, I will offer my advice here.

The external modem is the way to go.
Yes you will need a serial port, but that should be simple to find. Then the modem just works....no BS drivers needed. It will work today and later on Windows 27.

And modems were the one place where good quality really mattered. They were actual analog devices that needed good circuits to interface to the phone line in order to achieve the top bit rates. Grabbing a USRobotics model is probably a safe way to go. There were plenty listed on eBay when I just looked.
 
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 9:18 pm

videobits wrote:
Grabbing a USRobotics model is probably a safe way to go. There were plenty listed on eBay when I just looked.

Yep, my first self-built box (before cable internet) had a USR PCI hardware modem. Pretty sure it was a USR5610.
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Tue May 01, 2018 9:22 pm

videobits wrote:
Yes you will need a serial port, but that should be simple to find.

If your motherboard has a COM header (believe it or not, many current-gen mobos still do!), all you need is an appropriate rear port bracket and cable. Otherwise, get a USB serial adapter that uses a FTDI chipset.
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srg86
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Wed May 02, 2018 7:46 am

Back in the day I avoided WinModems like the plague. I think all full hardware internal modems are ISA, I don't think there are any PCI or PCIe based ones. I still would also recommend an external unit. I prefer having the lights, because they give actual useful information, plus it's not a WinModem.

I'd also go the internal COM header route (though I still use RS-232 ports and Null-Modem cables for talking to my old computers) if you can. I still find Super IOs more reliable than even FDTI USB/Serial converters. That said an FDTI based unit is a good second choice.
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Wed May 02, 2018 9:19 am

ludi wrote:
Saw this thread title on the front page Hot Threads and thought it had to be a world record necro.

Same! I thought it was an intentional necro for laughs

srg86 wrote:
Back in the day I avoided WinModems like the plague. I think all full hardware internal modems are ISA, I don't think there are any PCI or PCIe based ones. I still would also recommend an external unit. I prefer having the lights, because they give actual useful information, plus it's not a WinModem.

I'd also go the internal COM header route (though I still use RS-232 ports and Null-Modem cables for talking to my old computers) if you can. I still find Super IOs more reliable than even FDTI USB/Serial converters. That said an FDTI based unit is a good second choice.

"Back in the day" as it were, the one thing softmodems had going for them is that they were dirt cheap. These days, if you actually need a modem there's probably a good reason for it and it's not worth your time trying to resurrect ancient poorly supported crap
 
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Wed May 02, 2018 9:20 am

srg86 wrote:
Back in the day I avoided WinModems like the plague. I think all full hardware internal modems are ISA, I don't think there are any PCI or PCIe based ones. I still would also recommend an external unit. I prefer having the lights, because they give actual useful information, plus it's not a WinModem.

There were a few PCI full hardware modems, but the vast majority were indeed Winmodems.
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Wed May 02, 2018 3:12 pm

Completely off topic, but I had an internal PCI DSL modem in the late '90s. It pushed Netscape Navigator along at 1.5 mb/s without tying up the phone line. Yeah, those were the days. :P
 
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Wed May 02, 2018 3:47 pm

just brew it! wrote:
There were a few PCI full hardware modems, but the vast majority were indeed Winmodems.

My USR could push signal through the worst phone line. Once I got cable internet I gave it to a friend who was pretty much the last house on a line that was dodgy on its good days. Solidly locked on at 56K no matter what. I wonder where that thing ever ended up, as I'd like to place it in my personal HOF right next to the TBSC.
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Wed May 02, 2018 6:13 pm

Those old USRobotics Couriers had a well-deserved good reputation.
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Re: NT6 drivers for PCI modem?

Wed May 02, 2018 6:33 pm

bthylafh wrote:
Those old USRobotics Couriers had a well-deserved good reputation.

I wish I had held on to my Sportster. The only time I've gotten a firmware update via a socketed chip carrier in the mail!

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