>> Couriers are supposed to be very good modems.  This does not apply in
>> any way, though, to Sportsters, which are close to junk, IMHO.

>Why do you (and others, it would seem) dislike sportsters so?

I have nothing personal against Sportsters.  I've simply heard of so
many problems with them, that I am wary of them.  In fact, I have a
couple at work that work OK.  I have two Practical Peripherals modems
for my home PPP link that work just fine, too.

My experience comes from at least a couple people I know of who had
timing problems dialing in, where it would do something weird, causing
the dial-in port to drop the link, making the modem hang up.  Dialing
in again usually fixed the problem.  Forgive me for not giving more
detail on this, but it's been over a year since I've witnessed this,
so the details are getting kind of fuzzy in my memory.

The other thing is I used to be a customer of a large Internet Service
Provider in the Seattle area.  I would regularly read their newsgroups
where they would deal with customer problems.  And the only modem that
ever was specifically mentioned by name as causing problems was the
Sportster.  Evidently there was even a ROM version released that would
cause major problems connecting, and people who bought modems with
that ROM version had to get an upgrade from US Robotics to get decent
service.

>I walked into a random store, bought myself one, flipped one or two of
>the dip switches, and have been using it ever since (since > a year
>ago) as the modem that I use to dial in from home...

Then you got a good one, and you're lucky, from what I've heard.  If
you have one that works, you probably will not have problems with it,
in general, from the things I have read.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
        --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
    NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
               Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX...
    NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
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