External Modem problem

Boro

Right, this is a strange one.

Mate of mine moves into my house and sets up his computer. Soon after we notice the phone lines have all gone dead. Track the problem and find out its his external (generic 33.6k) modem thats causing the problem. We go off and get a new external fax modem (v90/v92). Plug it in, same thing.

Now, I have an internal modem plugged in, no problems. The phones are plugged in, no problems. Another guy has an external us robotics plugged in, no problems. As soon as a phone line enters the back of either of the two modems in question, we lose the dialing tone in the entire house. The externals in question dont even have to be plugged in to make this happen.

Im stumped. Never seen anything like it and cant quite understand how it could happen. The only difference between the two dodgy modems (generic and sitecom) and the working us robotics, is that the USR modem has a phone-out socket beside the line-in socket whereas the other two just have empty holes instead of a socket.

Generally I know what im doing, ive tested the modem in different locations around the house and stufff like that but i cant help feeling im missing something.

Any ideas?

GRAHAM2002

Stuoid question but have u spoken to a telephone engineer

XDA

Have you tried a different phone cable between the modem and the socket ?

Also try plugging either modem into a different socket in the house, it could be that the socket that you are plugging the modem into is faulty. You could also try plugging a phone into that socket to see if it works.

XDA

Boro

XDA :
Yes, Have tried it in a couple of different sockets. These sockets also have phones plugged into them. Whether the line is split or not makes no difference because as soon as the modem is plugged in, the phone lines in the WHOLE house all lose their dial tone. EG, when the modem is plugged in upstairs, both the upstairs and downstairs phones have no dial tone.

It is like the circuitry of the modem is acting like a black hole, whenever any phone cable (tried with several) touches the socket on the back of the modem, all lines go dead.

Graham 2002:
Nope. Thought one or two might number among the boards community here. Didnt fancy spending 30mins on hold before being told to check with the modem manufacturer (despite the fact this is happening with two completely different, working modems).

BoB_BoT

what kinda connection do they use, serial or usb? *edit* -the modems that is
what kinda phone connecter do they use, english style or irish?

have had a problem like that with phones, had an english phone, used one of the little converter thingys, worked no problem, but if you had anything else plugged into the socket i.e. a double phone adapter, the phone went crazy.

Boro

sorry i didnt get back to you,

Its a sitecom external modem from PCWorld.
It had an standard irish connector.
I tried it with the original lead, and with two other leads that i had (all working leads). None made a difference. Tried it all over the house.

Strange thing is that noone i have spoken to has any idea what could cause the problem. I returned the modem anyway, it worked fine when tested elsewhere. I bought a US Robotics modem, it works fine, no missing dial tone?

This modem only has a line-in connector, no phone out (no space for one rather - in my earlier posts i mentioned that the malfunctioning two both had phone-out ports with missing circuitry).

Well, i still would like to know what could cause that. Its one screwed up problem.

clansman

did u get on to eerrr mmm eircom?

sceptre

Originally posted by clansman
did u get on to eerrr mmm eircom?

Waste of time. They won't discuss anything to do with data transfer because we're a lucky nation that it works by accident or something (OK, they'll say "it's not covered by the USO and Eircom make no guarantees wrt data transfer and we don't do technical support for it - would you like to call our unrelated friends over at eircom dot net?" but it's the same thing really)