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CF Modem Card Comparison
If you're in the market for a CF card 56K modem, here's a couple of things I've learned by trial and error:
1) The class of CF card modem that has the thin case with "flip-up" RJ11 connector (Targus, Ambicom, and others) are hard-coded to try to connect only at 56kbps. If you have less-than-perfect telephone wiring in your house or in the hotel you're trying to dial from, the modem tries twice to connect at 56K. If it cannot connect, it does not do automatic speed step-down to try a lower speed -- which all non-PocketPC modems do. In my case, where I have noisy lines in my house, I can only connect using a Targus about once out of every six tries -- not good in a hotel with noisy lines when you pay $.75 for each local-call dial attempt.
Don't try to set a lower speed in your Connections settings. The speed that you set in Connections settings only controls the data transfer rate between the modem and your Pocket PC (port speed), not the actual line data rate. The modem still tries to connect at 56k regardless of your Connections setting.
2) The class of modem that is thicker and has the fixed RJ11 connector as a hump on top (Socket, and others) is more sophisticated and uses automatic speed step-down. If it encounters a noisy or low-quality telephone line, it tries lower and lower speeds until it finds one that works. In my case, using a Socket CF 56K card, I connect every time. Checking the MDMLOG file using File Explorer, I can see what speed the modem actually used to connect.
By the way, Socket comes with a little utility that installs on your PPC that is supposed to tell you what your connection speed is. But it's actually pretty useless because it only tells you the data rate that you've set in your Connections settings, which is the transfer rate between your modem and your PPC, not the actual line data rate. In my case, it always shows 57600, regardless of the actual line data rate.
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Al
Axim X5 400MHz
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