cg108dbd@icogsci1 (Steve -Social Hacker) (05/10/91)
Well, I bought two weeks ago!
I should begin by stating that I have no ties or previous experience
with CompuComm. I am writing this because I wish someone else had,
before I ordered.
I bought the CompuComm Combo which is the 9600/2400 MNP5/Fax modem.
Supposedly, there is a Voice Mail ROM upgrade coming in the
summer/fall and accompanying software to make the card function as a
fax/modem/voice-mailbox system all at once.
The ROM upgrade will be free to anyone who ordered their modem before
April 31, 1991, and will cost a "small fee" for later customers.
CompuComm also has a "Champ" modem that they sell for $169 that is the
same card, with no Fax or Voice Mail capabilities.
The "Combo" modem with all the features is $279.
I have had the modem for only two weeks now, so I am bound to learn
more soon.
Ok.. the review..
The first thing I noticed is that the manual was rather, umm, sparse.
Maybe it's just me, but I like manuals, and I would really like to see
every single AT command listed and explained. The manual basically
listed a few configureation options and troubleshooting hints. It was
clear and understandable, but it could have been more thorough in my
opinion. (You can only say so much in 19 pages.) There was a disk
that came with the modem that was supposed to contain more
documentation, so I popped that in and started flipping through files.
Most of them were Message files snarfed off of various BBS's and
Fidonet news. One did indeed contain a list of all the Hayes AT
commands, and another listed (most?) of the Extended commands for MNP
and Fax. I felt that a more through explanation of what my new modem
can do was definately missing.
So I look at the card.. To date, it is available only in the internal
card form, but they said they have plans to release an external
version "in the distant future." I would imagine that the Voice Mail
will not be possible in the external version due to the data
thoroughput needed to digitize voice, but who knows..
There were about 4 large chips, labeled CompuComm :), and one
transformer. That was pretty much the whole modem. In my opinion,
this is good. The fewer analog pieces, the better for longevity.
There were the usual two standard line jacks, and a real-life Volume
knob! I have had to use modems where the volume was soley software
controlled, so this is a plus for me.
There was a healthy set of jumpers that configured the modem to almost
any IRQ and Address setup. (COM1 to 22, according to the manual, and I
am inclined to believe it, wherever 22 is :) It came preconfigured to
COM4, which suited me fine as I already had COM1-3 occupied by serial
ports.
In it goes.. no smoke... good.
I figured the best way to test it would be to hop right in and see
where it breaks, so I set Procomm to COM4, 19200 baud, and send a
ATH1. This did indeed pick up the phone, and I heard the dial tone.
The problem was the the communication seemed strictly one-way. The
modem never sent me so much as a single character the whole time I
played with it. (AT&v atdt...) Hmmm.. back to the manual.
I tried pulling my COM3 card and making the modem COM3 instead. This
worked fine, but I was not happy to have one less com port than I
should, so I poked some more. As it turns out, you can NOT have a
mouse with an active driver on the same IRQ as the modem. Ahhh.. ok.
Well, my mouse was on COM2 and the modem was on COM4, so there was a
fight in there. This fact was stated clearly in the manual,
unfortunately in a section I had skipped on "Bus Mice". Ok.. so the
mouse is now on COM1, COM2 is a line to my XT, COM3 to another
external modem, and COM4 is the CompuComm. (whew)
This works fine. Later I was told that it was "common knowledge" that
nothing can share IRQ's with a mouse, but hey, now I know..
On with playing...
I just had to call a BBS and see it scream, so I dialed up one of the
5 local BBS's from a helpful list supplied on the disk with the modem.
Worked great! Keep in mind that I have been using a plain-jane
external 2400 modem up until now, so this packeting stuff was kind of
wierd. At 2400/MNP, there was a distinct pause after every 2.5 lines
or so, and sometimes this pause would get about two seconds long. I
have been told that the HST and V.32 modems do not do this. Is this
true? I am refering to the distinct bursts that data comes in (about
a quarter a screen at a time at 9600.)
Another interesting (annoying?) effect was a short pause in the
response from every key I typed. I never had this happen on my 2400,
but I hear this is normal for any Error Correcting protocol..
nonetheless, it made me feel like I was calling real-long distance,
and feeling the echo lag. I don't like it; I tend to hit backspace
more than I have to.
To sum things up, the modem communicates without a hitch at 9600, and
I was getting 810 CPS from Zmodem on a compressed file. (This seems
to be the same speed as I am also getting from Y-Modem G; isn't Y/G
supposed to be faster?)
Software:
--------
The modem came with MTEZ Communications Software, which seems pretty
nice. I have been using ProComm for almost 3 years now, but the keys
are almost identical, so there was little difficulty for me. The
software is excellently documented, and has a few really swell
features, like auto-long distance prefixing. (You tell it all the area
codes, and it does/doesn't prefix with 1 depending on where you call
from.)
Some initial problems: Ok.. now I had dabbled with the connections and
wanted to fine tune things a bit. This is where I started running
into problems. My first and most annoying problem is that the modem's
Non-Volatile RAM _isn't_! Pushing reset on my computer or cycling
power completely obliterates all three of the stored preset
configurations and the 4 stored numbers in the modem. Not good. I
want my modem to retain it's setup the way I like it. This is
especially a problem because it wants to default to AT&D0, which means
that it will ignore DTR dropping on the computer end. Unfortunately,
this is the way most comm programs like to drop the connection.
Also, it now began to annoy me that MTEZ would not let me listed to
the connection initialization. Procomm, for example, will call a
number and then wait for a connection response. MTEZ does it
differently. Maybe some technical dribble would help:
This is the way MTEZ dials: AT<init string> [wait for OK] AT<user
defined init string> [wait for OK] ATDT555-1212; [the ; makes the
modem return BEFORE the connection] ATO [wait for connection]
Apparently, the modem will shut off the speaker as soon as it goes
back to command mode (from the ';'). This is not good for
troubleshooting, because all you hear is the dial tones, then
immediate silence.
Maybe this can be fixed, but I can't get it to work.. MTEZ has the
following speaker options: No Sound Silence after Connect Speaker
always on.
Apparently, MTEZ thinks the speaker will stay on through the ATO
period. Oh well.. I can live with this, or use another comm program.
CSP:
---
That is what CompuComm calls their CompuComm Speedmodem Protocol
that is rumored to get above 34,000 with compression of 4:1.
This had to be the most disappointing hailed "feature" of this modem.
What CSP actually is is this program on the disk with all the DOC
files. It is available publically, and can probably be found on some
nearby BBS. To sum up it's features: BOGUS!
It is nothing more than an external File Transfer Protocol that
supposedly uses some hardware feature of the modem to help with
compression. Seeing as how no BBS's I called had CSP as a protocol
option, I have never had a chance to use it! The manual clearly
states that a file that was previously compressed will most likely
transfer faster using Ymodem-G than CSP. They recomment CSP for
transferring TEXT files. Well, maybe I am in the minority, but the
only time my modem transfers text is when I am reading it. The
_files_ are usually .ZIP or .Z files. I was hoping that the CSP
protocol would go between the modem and the terminal program and
compress/decompress text on the fly as I read it. This would require
it running on both ends, but every CompuComm comes with it anyway.
This would have made it a useful protocol for reading
mail/news/messsages where the text compression could really kick in.
FAX:
---
Alright.. Fax is what I paid the extra $110 (over the Champ price)
for. I do not own a Fax machine, so I was especially interested in
leaving my computer to attend a Fax line.
The software that runs the Fax is the Fax Add-On option package for
MTEZ (included). This installed fine, and looked pretty slick. I
believe it calls itself EzFax, and the program name is FAXMAN.
I really like the way that software is set up. You design a fax to
send, view it, and then send it.
Documentation was ample and clear (just like MTEZ).
It can intercept printer output and turn it into a fax page, it can
use fax page templates for common page layouts, it converts TIFF, PCX,
and other graphics formats for use in the Fax, can be run as a TSR,
loads into Expanded memory if you want, and is generally snazzy.
The first thing I did was have a fax sent to me. I popped up the
Harware Status screen to watch it come in. No problems, and lots of
interesting numbers and messages to keep the gadget-nerd in me happy.
:)
Then I went to the log screen, and selected the new fax (conveniently
marked Unread). It popped up on my screen, and was barely readable.
The whole page was up at once, so this is understandable. The Z key
zoomed in and made things much more readable. Nice. Then I went to
print the fax. Much to my surprise. CRASH!! the whole computer
slammed to a halt. Whoa.. So I booted off of a virgin DOS disk (no
TSR's, drivers, etc..) and tried again.. POW.. same thing.. even the
keyboard lights hung. Not good. I would like to be able to print my
faxes. I have a Panasonic KXP-1080 dot matrix printer, if that
matters. Anyone else try this??
Ok, so I called the Tech Support number for MT (MagicSoft.) It was
the only help number listed in the manual. They replied three days
later and left an updated version of some of the binaries for me to
download. I tried them with the same results. I can NOT print any
fax that I receive or generate.
I have not yet seen any faxes I have sent, so no comments there, but
the connection works fine.
One feture I like is the overlayed graphics.. You can select a
"border" or additional bitmap to put your fax message in. Very Nice.
(Like a Speedy delivery van!) Supposedly, you can use a scanner to
put your logo/letterhead/signature on there too.
By the way, the fax software will take most common word processor
files right in. (I.e. it reads WordPerfect 5.0 files directly.)
Overall, I was not expecting this nice of a Fax interface, but I
definately want it to print.
DOWNSIDE:
--------
Well, the modem definately has its drawbacks. The
first is minor: I don't like internal modems. Yes, it's a personal
preference, but I want those lights! I never realised how much I
glance at them to make sure the protocol is going ok, or the other end
is listening, or which side is sending the garbage, or whether I am
receiving while in a DOS shell... Oh well.
The second is more serious: It fights with my scanner. I have a
Marstek Mars800 hand scanner that turns on the bright green LED's
everytime the modem gets a DTR. This I find very odd. It's not good,
because after a few hours of being lit up, the scanner gets
surprisingly warm. Worse yet, the scanner is completely
non-functional if the CompuComm is in the computer. This is very bad,
because I do not want to have to pull my modem out of the case every
time I need to scan something. This specifically dashes my hopes of
conveniently scanning in small things and faxing them direct.
I already mentioned the incontinence of the "NonVolatile" RAM, but I
suspect that this is hardware failure, and will call CompuComm ASAP to
find out more.
Also, the transfer rate seems lower than it was advertised at ("950+
BPS!). I regularly get 750-820 Characters per second using Ymodem-G
and Zmodem. It surprised me that the two protocols were so close in
speed. Hopefully, with more tuning, I can bring this speed up. I am
careful to make sure that MNP compression is turned off for d/loading
compressed files, but that ram-wiping makes it a real hassle to keep
it off. (It defaults to ON)
The packeting makes MNP a real drag. I prefer plain vanilla 2400
anyday, and it seems to me that it is even faster in the normal mode.
Any hard facts on this? Most of my 2400 connections are really clean
anyway. Maybe text reading at 2400 would be nice in MNP5 if it was
not so jerky.
There seems to be an awful lot of pausing in the 9600 communication.
There are two modes for 9600 CompuComm connects, "9600" and "9600/REL"
(which stands for reliable). Hmmm.. the docs never explained the
difference between the two, and I have no idea. One BBS wouldn't let
me download w/ Ymodem at "9600" because it claimed I had no error
correction. Can this be what it is?
The hardware lights would come in handy for checking what the pausing
is all about, but alas..
I have seen the modem miss a Fax receive. The machine called, the
modem answered in fax mode, and never connected. This only happened
once, and was logged very nicely by the Fax software, but it makes me
suspicious none the less.
In all reality, I do not see this or any other fax card replacing the
real fax machine, as most of what I fax are assorted, preprinted
forms. Scanning them in to fax them is bordering on absurd (maybe
with a fast and convenient full-page scanner), BUT if you mostly fax
things you print anyway, I would imagine this would work great.
Supposedly, the quality of a direct ASCII-Fax document is fabulous,
because it was never scanned at all, but generated digitally.
If the thing printed proper, I would prefer it to a real fax for
receiving, because I have the option to view the faxes before printing
them. (i.e. filter junk) The printed fax would then be on plain paper
and also stored on disk. The fax files are suprisingly small; a full
page of typed text took 81K on my disk. I could store many of these
with no problem.
Supposedly, the modem can be asked to answer as BOTH fax and modem at
once, but there doesn't seem to be any software support for this dual
role.
Of course, I cannot connect to any 9600 modems other than the
CompuComm, but hey, I was expecting this, and really don't mind since
many BBS's near me are getting a CompuCom line because it is so cheap,
and apparently popular.
I must say that 810 CPS is still blowing my socks off, after years
(and hundreds of megs) of 224 or so at 2400 baud. What kind of CPS do
the HST and V.32's get?? How packeted are they?
I should also mention that it is NOT full duplex at 9600 baud. I
believe that the slow-side is on the order of 400 baud. This really
doesn't bother me at all since I rarely type faster than 400 baud :), and
I don't intend to run TCP/IP or anything bidirectionally intensive.
Does anyone know how these modems decide to "switch" sides to optimize
speed? I really hope it doesn't do the whole flip to send a ACK
message, or a single keystroke.
----
Overall, I would say that this modem was worth what it costs. If your
needs involve lots of HST or V.32/42 connects, then maybe it's not
for you, but as a medium-scale BBS user, I thought I would give it
a try.
If you are planning to buy a 2400 MNP modem, I would definately say Go
for it, but leave the fax out and save $100. I hope they work out the
printer problem with the fax software, but even then I would have to
say that it can't truely take the place of a real fax machine. I
suspect the scanner incompatibility is Mars specific, but I would
appreciate hearing from anyone that has had similar/different
experiences.
Although the modem is ok for the money, I am planning on sending it
back, adding $100 or so, and buying a full-blown HST. The protocol
just isn't common enough to be useful, and I now realise that I MUST
have an external modem. :-)
When my needs require a fax machine, I shall buy one of those fax-only
cards for $130 or so.
The order/info, but not Tech Help :-( line for CompuComm is:
1-800-ACT-ON-IT. (cute)
If you have a HST V.42 14.4K modem, I would really like to hear what
kind of experiences/performance/evaluation you have.
Thanks.
Comments, rational flames, questions, ideas to: shaehnic@ucsd.edu
--
-----
Steve Haehnichen
shaehnichen@ucsd.educg108dbd@icogsci1.ucsd.edu (Steve -Social Hacker) (05/11/91)
Well, I called CompuCom today to get some help with the modem I
reviewed. Here's the scoop:
First of, CompuCom gets an A+ from me for service.. They actually had
a knowlegeable person there to help me out. For me, this is a first.
There was no voice menu to wade through, no neverending rings... just
"Hello. CompuCom, how can I help you?"
I gave them my name and number, and we went to town fixing problems.
First, the most annoying problem.. the modem totally hoses my Mars800
scanner. Well, they were as mystified as I and suspected an IRQ
conflict. Because I had absolutely no tech info on the scanner, they
could do little more than recommend that I call Marstek and get more
info on it.
#2: The very-volatile ram configuration.
This was a real bummer.. get this.. the modem has NO Non-Volatile
RAM!! None at all! Yes it has at&w at&w0 at&w1 at&z and so on to
"store" configurations, but they all get wiped on reset or power-down.
Not good.. this means I have to make sure that every comm program
fully sets up the modem, which is not really a big deal. Fortunately,
it does not default to auto-answer. :)
Ok.. the fax-printing problem. This is where I was impressed. The
lady I was talking to was stumped, but said, "Hold on" and handed the
phone to another gentleman (Mark?) who really knew his stuff. What
blew me away is that he didn't give me the regular stupid-user listing
with "Are you sure the modem is installed? Do you have 500K of TSR's
loaded? Is the computer turned on?"
Anyway, he to was stumped, but was determined to fix it. He worked
with me on-line while I reconfigured and tested things. In the end,
he said to call John at MagicSoft (the software manufacturer) and gave
me the main phone number which was not in the MTEZ manual.
To make a long story longer, John WROTE the EZFax software, and was
very interested in finding out what was wrong. The fix turned out to
be, Move it to the root directory! Although the manual tells you how
to set up MTEZ in any subdir, there is a nasty bug in it that will
crash VGA machines if EZFax is not in C:\MTEZ. Bingo.. I can now
print faxes, and John is busy debugging.. Apparently, the problem is
rare, but I was the third person to run into it.
Now I can talk about the fax printouts! Excellent. This, of course,
is a feature of the software, and nothing to do with the CompuCom, but
I figure that most fellow-shoppers are curious to know about the Whole
package. Anyway, the printouts are very crisp. I received a fax
generated by a fax card, and the output was very close to the real
text quality of my Panasonic KXP-1180i in draft mode! I was expecting
more lossage. Of course, your mileage may vary, but I would guess
that a laser printer would yeild some pretty astounding results.
Apparently, I was the first to bring the speaker-monitor dialout
problem to their attention. They (CompuCom) were surprised that it
behaved this way, but suspected that it was just one of those
conflicting-standards problems.. (For those of you who missed the post
describing the problem, the modem will silence the speaker immediately
after dialing when the ';' is appended to the dial command. MTEZ does
not know this, so you can't hear the modem connect.)
That was about it for my problems.
I also learned a little bit more about the forth-coming VoiceMail
support. The card is equipted with full DMA ability, although the
modem and fax do not use it. The VoiceMail data will supposedly be
able to go from modem directly to hard disk.. Nice! They are still
working on the ROMs but expect to have them out by fall of this year.
That's about it! Unfortunately, for the reasons I mentioned before, I
will probably still be sending this modem back and investing in an HST
(with non-volatile ram, I hope!)
Any comments, questions, ideas, HST tips, very welcome at the below
address.
--
>> Steve Haehnichen <<
shaehnichen@ucsd.edu Disclaimer: UCSD and I do not share any opinions.shihsun@lamp.Princeton.EDU (S. Spencer Sun) (05/13/91)
one point...you mentioned how it was a plus that the Compucom had a real volume knob rather than being software controlled. While it is true that this allows you to set the volume to any intermediate level that you want, this has a distinct DISadvantage on internal modems :-)
cg108dbd@icogsci1.ucsd.edu (Steve -Social Hacker) (05/14/91)
In article <9471@idunno.Princeton.EDU> shihsun@lamp.Princeton.EDU (S. Spencer Sun) writes: one point...you mentioned how it was a plus that the Compucom had a real volume knob rather than being software controlled. While it is true that this allows you to set the volume to any intermediate level that you want, this has a distinct DISadvantage on internal modems :-) --- Yeah, adjusting it is not the ultimate in convenience. Of course, there is _also_ the ATLx commands to tune it from the keyboard. Could be worse.. like this keyboard with all of 2 feet of cable, or my mouse on a 2.5' tether.... Heaven forbid that anyone would want to put their tower case NEXT TO or below the desk.... Kinda makes ya yearn for those days when the keyboard WAS the computer... :-) -Steve -- >> Steve Haehnichen << shaehnichen@ucsd.edu Disclaimer: UCSD and I do not share any opinions.