Maybe you all already knew this. But I did not. And it 
cost me over two hundred bucks to fix!

While working in another of my company's plants in 
Detroit I could not FTP because of a firewall. So I 
hauled out my cheapest laptop, the Gateway Solo running 
Win98. But I couldn't get through. Now, PPP on Win98 is 
so damn user-friendly I could not find out why it won't 
work.

So, naturally, I hauled out my better, 2nd laptop, a 
Thinkpad running NetBSD. Still no connect, but at least 
I can investigate. Querried the modem. Hm... Looks 
okay. Just no answer from the ISP. 

But what are the chances that AT&T is down in Detroit. 
So I hand dial and listen: beep, sqawk,screeeeeee. 

Then when I get home, still the laptops can't connect.

Turns out that the PBX phone system at my job in Detroit 
blew out BOTH of my modems. 

Further, also found dead was the Linksys LAN card which 
had reposed next to the Winmodem card in my Gateway 
Solo. But not the identical Linksys LAN card similarly 
next to a Best Data card (a REAL modem) in my IBM 
Thinkpad. 

And more oddly, with two dead cards slotted into the 
PCMCIA socket of my Gateway Solo, the USB also did not 
work. But after I replaced both cards, the USB came back 
online.

Now all is well again. As for the Winmodem, I'm almost 
glad it's dead. But still, and to quote the immortal 
words of Droopy Dog, "You know what? That makes me mad."

So if you've got an older modem, do watch out for 
digital phone networks. Some hotels, I'm told, also now 
have them. Or, shuck out some bucks for a PBX-guard type 
modem.

Regards,

Gan

--
Mysterious Starling -- Rarest Extinct Bird
     _         
   <(+)__        Gan Uesli Starling 
     ((__/)=-    Kalamazoo, MI, USA
      `||`      
       ++        http://starling.ws 

Newbie-2-Newbie NetBSD Unix How-To Pages at... 
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