About five months ago, I purchased an external USR5868D (the older v.90 version) because my ISP does not and says they will not support v.90 due to problems ugrading (they use 3Com's HiPer ARC system), and because I found one in basically perfect condition for $30 on eBay. For a few days the only problem I had was that the LEDS on the front kept me awake at night and I had to cover them, but then the modem started making a horrible whining noise when it tried to connect (if I had a microphone I would record it). I found that after it started you would have to turn it off and leave it off for at least 5 minutes before it would achieve a good connection again. If you have had this happen and know how to remedy it, tell me asap because the next paragraph can be disregarded; if the external works I'm going to toss the 5610a in the garbage.

I then bought a new internal USR Performance Pro modem(5610a, not 5610b) from Newegg in the hopes that it would do as it promised and block the little line noise that I have (which had not been a problem until my old excellent Broadxent Winmodem was damaged and I was forced to use an older unbranded modem I received with the computer) and to alleviate game lag I was having with the Winmodem. However, I've recently come to find that the Control Center, among other things, is useless and has probably ruined my modem in some inexplicable way. I started changing the settings, disasling v.92 and whatnot, and I kept noticing that after I disconnected and reconnected after a successful connection, the settings had been reset and I had to spend 5 minutes letting it update the modem. Anyway, I eventually gave up and just used init strings to disable v.92 (+PIG=1 +PMH=1 +PQC=3 as specified by someone on this board in another post) and it seems to be connecting okay, but I get horrible game lag. It pings okay (110-150ms) to a server on the east coast (the game is Continuum and the servers are Hockey Zone and Trench Wars (which use the same ISP) if anyone knows it) but in game I find I have tremdous packetloss (1-5% Server-to-client and usually over 5% client-to-server) and 500ms+ pings, which make it impossible to play at all.

Anyone have similar problems? If you could help me with my 5686D I would be most appreciative. The last good USR modem I had was the 2976, which was a beautiful, perfect piece of hardware, but very susceptible to lightning damage (doh.) and too expensive to replace.

Here's the ati6/ati11 responses from the 5610a, if anyone's interested (connecting with hyperterm to my ISP with v.92 disabled using the aforementioned init strings).

ati6:
Chars sent 12 Chars Received 603
Chars lost 0
Octets sent 12 Octets Received 355
Blocks sent 12 Blocks Received 18
Blocks resent 0

Retrains Requested 0 Retrains Granted 0
Line Reversals 0 Blers 0
Link Timeouts 0 Link Naks 0

Data Compression V42BIS 2048/32
Equalization Long
Fallback Enabled
Protocol LAPM/SREJ
Speed 50666/24000
V.90 Peak Speed 50666
Last Call 00:00:44

Disconnect Reason is DISC Received

ati11:
Modulation V.90/V.34
Carrier Freq (Hz) None/1920
Symbol Rate 8000/3200
Trellis Code None/64S-4D
Nonlinear Encoding None/ON
Precoding OFF/ON
Shaping OFF/ON
Preemphasis Index 8/2
Recv/Xmit Level (-dBm) 18.2/8.8
Near Echo Loss (dB) 36.8
Far Echo Loss (dB) 0
Carrier Offset (Hz) 0
Round Trip Delay (msec) 13
Timing Offset (ppm) 6485
SNR (dB) 49.6
Speed Shifts Up/Down/Null 0/0/0
Status : uu,5,12N,12.2,-15,1Y,000,50.9,-59.5,0

Thanks for reading (if you did), and thanks in advance for any help you can offer. :)

I've tried to limit my modem to v.34, but a 31.4kbps connection isn't fast enough (apparently) to support the game, even though it was produced at a time when 28.8 was the standard. Limiting the connect speed doesn't do anything except make the connection slower in general. I'm using the 5610a right now and he seems to be okay for browsing, but gaming still sucks.

Also, I had to attempt to connect two or three times because it would not handshake properly. I'm about to go over the status line as soon as I finish my homework and see what I can figure out.

Is there a network card in the PC?
www.modemsite.com/56k/nic.asp

When you connected a V.34 speeds, what was your UP-rate? (only the i6 shows this - on your 50.6k connect, your upstream was only 24k; I'd suggest limit speed - try 48k on the down - see if the upstream rate improves
www.modemsite.com/56k/x2-linklimit.asp

What speeds did you get with the first modem? Would like to see i6/i11/y11 results from it, too if possible.

Before I start, let me say that I've called and emailed my ISP for tech support but they're apparently dunderheads who think that having software like Adobe's gamma correction software load was causing disconnects.

The 5610A is dead. Kaput. It handshakes flawlessly but it always gets "The remote computer did not respond..". So, I've given up. I'm using the 5686D external at the moment. I've given up on game lag for now, because I'm concerned that in a week I won't be able to get online at all. I've been browsing USR.com, Modemsite and another forum for about 15 minutes now, and already I've heard my modem retrain three times, all during periods of inactivity while I was reading something. It seems to have a pattern for disconecting, too. It will start to retrain, then it will start again, fail, retrain again, the volume will decrease and then it eventually will drop.

EVERY successful connection (except this one) I've made has reported a down speed of 28,800 and v.34, even though I'm connecting at speeds between 45.3 and 50.6 (it's really irrelevant--they all report the same thing) with v.90 enabled. It can't even CONNECT when I use v.34. The HCF modem I mentioned does the same thing, except I am unable to see what is the problem. The modemlog from this session is included at the bottom of the post.

The modem has stopped making whining noises, and seems to be in regular working order now. I'm using USR's driver, although XP's does the same thing. I've found that limiting to 45.3 and under seems to at least ensure that the modem will connect, however the speeds are godawful (like I said, 28,800 down and usually 19.2 up) and I find that I have data blocks being resent more than once.

I have a microphone and could record the noise the modem makes through a session if anyone would like to hear it.

One last thing (that just happened as I am typing)..the heater came on, and my modem retrained twice in a row, and the speaker volume decreased. *sigh*, I hate this house.

TIA.

-----------This connection achieved 50.6kbps with software compression (MPPC) enabled, in lieu of regular compression. Both work equally well it seems.

Modemlog (to 12:53pm, 12/24/03) USR5686D External:

http://www.vci.net/~zeus/Modemlog122403.txt
-------------------------------------------------------

ati6:

U.S. Robotics 56K FAX EXT Link Diagnostics...

Chars sent 82725
Chars Received 262367
Chars lost 0
Octets sent 101514
Octets Received 294676
Blocks sent 1561
Blocks Received 2759
Blocks resent 1913

Retrains Requested 0
Retrains Granted 4
Line Reversals 0 Blers 0
Link Timeouts 41
Link Naks 65

Data Compression NONE
Equalization Long
Fallback Enabled
Protocol LAPM/SREJ
Speed 49333/24000
V.90 Peak Speed 50666
Last Call 00:21:53

Disconnect Reason is DTR dropped

OK
-------------------------------------------------------
ati11:

Modulation V.90/V.34
Carrier Freq (Hz) None/1920
Symbol Rate 8000/3200
Trellis Code None/64S-4D
Nonlinear Encoding None/ON
Precoding OFF/ON
Shaping ON/ON
Preemphasis (-dB) 8/2
Recv/Xmit Level (-dBm) 17.7/8.8
Near Echo Loss (dB) 36.6
Far Echo Loss (dB) 0
Carrier Offset (Hz) 0
Round Trip Delay (msec) 14
Timing Offset (ppm) 3035
SNR (dB) 49.4
Speed Shifts Up/Down/Null 0/0/0
Status : uu,5,12N,12.0,-15,1Y,000,50.3,-65.9,0
OK
-------------------------------------------------------

atiy11:

Freq Level (dB)

150 22
300 19
450 19
600 19
750 19
900 19
1050 19
1200 19
1350 19
1500 19
1650 19
1800 20
1950 20
2100 20
2250 20
2400 21
2550 21
2700 21
2850 22
3000 22
3150 23
3300 24
3450 27
3600 31
3750 38
OK

Oh, and the last connection ( the one that was used to upload and post the previous post ) dropped because the modem was "unable to retrain". ..WHAT? I've NEVER had this error. Also, it got ridiculous connection speeds: 50666/9600. 9600??! What the HELL? I've really had it with this 56k business. I'm counting the days until I can actually get a decent connection at college.

I've also tried disconnecting all the phones in the house to see what happened, but all that resulted it was getting an angry phone call from my mom when I plugged them back up saying that she couldn't call the house.

This stress is not worth 5kbps with an 8 hour disconnect.
--------------------------EDIT

I think I'm going to cry. This is from the previous connection (the one above the ----- line):

U.S. Robotics 56K FAX EXT Link Diagnostics...

Chars sent 28170
Chars Received 79354
Chars lost 0
Octets sent 36362
Octets Received 85483
Blocks sent 675
Blocks Received 877
Blocks resent 970

Retrains Requested 0
Retrains Granted 1
Line Reversals 0 Blers 23
Link Timeouts 14
Link Naks 32

Data Compression NONE
Equalization Long
Fallback Enabled
Protocol LAPM/SREJ
Speed 42666/19200
V.90 Peak Speed 42666
Last Call 00:08:34

Disconnect Reason is GSTN Cleardown

OK

..GSTN Cleardown? Seeing the discrepancy between the connect speed (50.6) and the peak speed (42.6), I've limited the connection to 45.3.

Status : uu,5,12N,12.0,-15,1Y,000,50.3,-65.9,0
Note line 6 also.
Item Number 6: This item indicates the number of Robbed Bit Signal links in the telco circuit between client
and host. You can still achieve 56k type connect speeds with RBS links, however if you have a Y here, this
indicates a type B Codec which could mean that you are on a SLC96 (often referred to as a Slick). A slick is
used when there are not enough twisted pairs in the area to meet customer needs. When a slick is used you
are given extra Analog to Digital/Digital to Analog conversions, thus making v90 speeds impossible.

Item Number 9: This item indicates the Codec Distortion. A value here that is higher than 26 could indicate
troubles. (Note that item 9 works differently on v92 USRs.)

Make sure the DIP switches on the back of your modem are set correctly.
DIP switches 3, 5, and 8 should be in the down position. See the
diagram in the basic troubleshooting section for the proper settings.

The 'Y' in the USR status line (15Y) doesn't necessarily mean the line really has the rare type B codec - it does mean that on that particular call at that particular time the modem thinks there's a type B codec. If modem is unable to accurately determine digital impairments (because of some other impairment like bad wiring, etc.) you will not get good connections until problem is corrected.