These instructions will help you determine the properties for a 56K modem installed in a computer running Windows 95/98. These properties include the name of your modem, its connection capabilities and driver revision numbers or dates. This information is needed in order to determine if your modem manufacturer has released any driver revisions which may improve its connection speed or reliability.

Drivers are software (written to Windows 95/98 system files) and firmware (written to a special electronic chip on the modem itself) which contain programming code instructing your modem on how to perform. Without drivers, Windows would not know what purpose your modem serves. Drivers are installed during the installation of your modem, either automatically by using a driver database included with Windows 95/98, or manually by using additional diskettes or a CD-ROM provided by the manufacturer.

Drivers are a key factor in the performance of your modem. Poorly designed drivers and/or how Windows 95/98 interacts with them can cause many seemingly unresolvable modem problems. This is particularly true for the newer 56K modems that experience frequent disconnections or the inability to obtain a connection to the University of Denver modem pool.

Driver revisions contain changes to that original code. Drivers released for the newer 56K modems are often called V.90 updates. Many modem manufacturers have released several different V.90 updates, and your modem will require the most recent version for best performance. Therefore, even a brand new modem may and often will require an update.

Before you can update your modem, you need to determine what modem you have installed in your computer. You also need to find as much information as possible about your modem's drivers to compare this with the information from your modem manufacturer.

Below are instructions explaining how to determine your modem properties from within Windows 95/98:

1. Go to START/Settings/Control Panel
2. Double-click the Modems icon, shown below:

3. The name of your modem should appear in the box beneath the sentence, "The following modems are set up on this computer." Write down this information on a piece of paper. (The example below shows a Viking Components ™ PCI Internal 56K Data/Fax Modem installed. This may or may not be the same modem installed in your computer!)

4. Click on the Diagnostics tab. A window should appear listing the COM ports (communications ports) installed in your computer. One of them should repeat the modem entry shown on the previous tab. (For the example shown below, the Viking™ K56Flex, V.90 compliant PCMCIA modem is installed on COM 2.)

5. Select the COM port on which your modem is installed by clicking once on the COM port itself. Once selected, click the More Info button on that tab. You will see a dialog box appear that reads, "Communicating with modem, this may take a few minutes." Then, another dialog box should appear, entitled, "Port information." A sample dialog box is shown below:

IMPORTANT: The information in the sample dialog box above will be completely different from yours, including the information for Port, Interrupt, Address, UART, Response, etc.

6. The important information is that which appears in the white text box at the bottom of the dialog box. This text box has two headings, Comm… and Response. Below those headings are several lines which begin with ATI and then a number. Most modem information is found on the line that begins with ATI3 (pronounced "a-t-i-3"), although you may want to write down all of the information found between lines ATI3 and ATI7 (or higher if that applies to your modem.) Again, the information you will copy will be specific to your modem.

TIP: An easy way to copy the information is to make a screen print of the window itself. To do this, you need a word processing program like MS Word. Make the window active by clicking it. Then, press the ALT + PrtScreen keys together. Open a new document in Word and choose Edit, Paste. This will paste the screen print directly into the document. You can then print out the screen for reference.

The information shown for the example above is:

ATI1 255
ATI2 OK
ATI3 Viking, 3.22-V2 083-K56_2M_DLL
ATI4 Viking k56KFlex & V.90
ATI5 022
ATI6 RC56DPFL8570A Rev 47.22/47.22
ATI7 OK

What can be determined from this information? On line ATI3, one can see that this Viking™ modem is both k56KFlex and V.90, and it has driver version 3.22 installed. This was found ONLY by visiting the Viking™ support site on the Internet.

At the time this document was created, the latest driver release available for download for this modem was version 3.22, so this modem had the most current firmware and can operate only as well as this driver version allows. (This information may have changed since publication and is meant to be used for instructional purposes only!)

7. Copy the information from lines ATI3-ATI7 as discussed above and visit the web site for the manufacturer of your modem or computer. By having the information found using this document, you will know the exact modem you have. You will also be able to compare driver revision numbers or release dates with those posted on the web site. This way, you can determine if the web site has a more recent driver release or V.90 update available to download. Most 56K modem problems have been resolved immediately after downloading and installing a more current V.90 update.