Upgrade modem chip


Tip
Thankyou for the continued fine work, and judging from the article in October 1996 Star-Dot-Star, To boost modem signal, upgrade modem chip, by John Stevenson your readers might benefit from the years that I have spent designing modems.
Firstly, the modem upgrade that John Stevenson wrote about was technically not an upgrade on the modem chip. It was, in fact, an upgrade of the modem's operating firmware (read as BIOS). Furthermore, upgrading modem chips is almost a non-event due to the modem chips from various manufactures being incompatible.

When you upgrade a 486 computer, Intel, AMD and Cirrus all provide a plug-in CPU chip, but modem manufacturers do not apply the same discipline to their chip designs -- even the same manufacturer may not offer a plug-in replacement for the next generation of modems. Therefore, the safest way to approach the purchase of a modem is to buy from a reputable local company, such as NetComm, Maestro, Banksia, etc, and ascertain what their upgrade/trade-in policy is before purchasing. After all, a local company is more likely to provide that type of customer service.
- Bob Singleton


Category: Hardware
Issue: Dec 1996
Pages: 172

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