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Introduction
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If you've got a question, simple or complicated, strange or common, send it to us. We'll try to answer as many questions as we have time for. And who knows, maybe your question will be the basis of a future article? Send your questions to any of the electronic addresses listed elsewhere in this issue.
Dealing With Line Noisy
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Q: I think I have a problem with noise on my telephone line. Many times, my connection is abruptly disconnected. Is there any way I can make the line cleaner?
- T. Evans
Jacksonville, FL
A: One of the commonest problems is having your modem physically too close to a source of interference. Even your telephone can cause interference. Try moving the modem so it is at least six inches away from anything with a power supply or electrical motor. Also, check the cords you use between the wall jack and the modem. Heavy duty cords are better shielded and may help reduce interference.
If you are still having problems after trying the above suggestions, you might need to call your phone company and have them check the line.
Corrupt Downloads
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Q: I am having a problem downloading certain files from an associate's computer. She is using a word processor on her PC, and the word processor publisher claims that I can open these files on my Mac. However, after downloading the files, my mac word processor will not open them.
- B. Smith
Oakland, CA
A: The downloaded files might have gotten corrupt during the file transfer. The most common reason for this is attempting a MacBinary receive on a non-Macintosh file. In MicroPhone, if you receive a file using MacBinary, and it is not a Macintosh file, the protocol will do a line feed and carriage return conversion. Because of this, data in the file may become corrupt. To prevent this from happening, when you download non-Mac files, do not use MacBinary. Instead, use a regular Binary transfer.
Connecting to Older Modems
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Q: There is an atomic clock somewhere in Boulder, Colorado. You can dial it using your modem. However, it seems to want a 300 baud modem, and my V.32bis modem refuses to connect. What can I do?
- J. Rangoff
Riverside, CA
A: Sometimes, modems are just too intelligent. They try to establish the best possible connection with each other, using data compression, error correction, and other cool features. Unfortunately, 300 baud modem don't know much about all this newfangled stuff. So, when a super high-speed modem attempts to communicate with it and sends out weird handshaking stuff, the 300 baud modem assumes that something has gone wrong and disconnects. To make matters worse, some high-speed modems do not support 300 baud at all. If yours does, try issuing it the following AT command:
ATNS37=3
The N command instructs your modem to attempt a connection based on the contents of S register 37. If you set S register 37 to 3, your modem will only attempt a 300 baud connection, nothing more. Make sure you also set MicroPhone's baud rate to 300 baud, or you'll get lots of strange looking garbage on the screen after the two modems connect.
