I spent nearly the whole day trying to get the modem going on the antiques guy's computer. He's up to three puters now, one (Compaq) that is connected to a cable modem, one (Gateway) he wants on a phone modem, and one (who knows?!) he just now got from somebody that he also wanted on a phone modem. The third turned out to be a very large doorstop of indeterminately advanced age. I couldn't get it to even power up.

The Gateway didn't have a modem in it when I first came on the scene. It was connected to the cable modem via ethernet card. But the guy had just gotten in a better puter and wanted it on the cable, and the other on the phone line, so I cannibalized its modem (56K PCI) and have been trying to install it in the older one ever since. It hasn't worked. Windows can't even tell it's there.

I pulled the modem out of the cold carcass (BUS - I have no idea how fast) of the most recent machine and tried that one in it. Windows loved finding it there, hated the errors it got from the query. I began to wonder if the thing were just allergic to modems in general. Just on a whim, I went home and ripped out my own modem (33.6 BUS) to see if his machine could feel it, which it could, just fine.

I thought the cure for everything would be an external modem, but earlier in the day had gone over to Staples to get a look at pricing. $140. No kidding. They didn't have any 33.6 externals, like you used to find all over the freaking place. He also needed a SCSI cable for his scanner, but that was $40 and therefore also a no-go. Sigh.