Dave Ciemny had problems racing GPL online with a USB modem. With his old modem, he could race fine, but with the USB modem, he got errors, "10049 - cannot assign requested address." These errors coincided with a disconnect from his ISP. I suggested he talk to his ISP's tech support, and also try other ISP's. Nothing worked. Dave said:
I tried 3 different ISP's. Two national, one local. I got booted from the game and the Internet everytime I ran the game online. Checked settings and everything else, no conflicts. The local [retail computer store] guy feels it is the USB modem.
Dave returned the USB modem and got an internal PCI modem designed specifically for Internet gaming. Here's what he said:
I just got my computer back tonight. I now have a 56k US Robotics Gaming Modem. I experimented for about an hour and a half.
It is a hardware based modem but I still turned off error control and set the FIFO buffers to one click from the left. I have my max speed still set at 115200.
Anyhow I split my time between Mindspring and a local provider just south of Buffalo. I thought the local provider had a little better connection than the national one. Pings between 180 and 275. Even races that looked risky were OK once I was in. It was nice to always see the cars around me. No disconnects either. I'll race more over the next couple of days and give you a final report (hopefully it will be good news :-).
BTW I was told the area I'm in has some bad phone lines so if I can keep a connection consistent with what I had tonight I will be happy.
- Dave Ciemny
Dave has now written a comprehensive article on his Internet Gaming Modem experience.
Based on your advice about USB modems, I bought Entrega's USB to Serial Converter, which allows me to run my serial modem from a USB port and this seems to work very well. The documentation says that you get all the benefits of a USB modem from your serial modem and I have noticed a great improvement, although I still get disconnects occasionally. If you already have a 56kbs serial modem this looks like a cheaper alternative to buying a whole new USB modem and allows you to run other serial devices though a USB port as well.
- Paul Jones
MultiTech has posted a firmware upgrade for the MT5634ZBA-USB modem. It has fixed the problem with Windows 98 not detecting the modem after a powerdown. Worked great for me. In case you don't have it I provided the link below:
The file name is 56ZBAUSB.EXE Upgrades the firmware to version 4.16D.
I did notice, however, that since I had installed the upgrade I have been connecting at a slightly lower speed than before the upgrade. I usually connect at a constant 45.3; now it connects at 42.0-44.0. Maybe it's just a coincidence but keep it in mind. I'm curious to know if yourself or anyone else has noticed this difference in connect speed or is it just "the net" recently.
- Jason Hunsinger
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When I use the USB modem and run gpl with my Voodoo 2 card the frame rate drops 8 to 10 fps across the board.
Only GPL is affected this way. Other games using the Voodoo 2 card such as Quake, Quake 2, Unreal and Half-life are not affected by the use of the USB modem.If I use my normal zoom modem the frame rate goes back to its normal solid 36 fps.But as soon as I switch to the MultiTech USB modem the frame rates drop. I have four computers and it does the same thing on all four.
I have also tried this on a couple of friends' machines with the same results. I also have a Rendition board in each of my machines; if I switch to the Rendition version of GPL the USB modem has no effect on frame rates.Weird to say the least. The USB modem works fine otherwise I have 3 ISP's my connect speeds went from 44000-48000 to 50000 to 53000 with the USB modem.
Only the Voodoo 2 version of GPL seems to be affected. My NASCAR2 Voodoo 2 version seems to run just fine online on the TEN network.I don't know how to check the fps in NASCAR but I don't see any slow down of the frame rate or jerkiness like I can in GP. GPL Voodoo 2 version is affected even in single player mode as long as the USB modem is in use (i.e. just connected to ISP, no browser or activity on the modem of any kind.)
- Ken McIntosh
This is a link to a program that folks can use to see if their system is USB ready.
Following is a link to a Q&A site for usb devices/developers, etc. Intel and MS folks monitor it. I didn't see anything regarding Voodoo card specifically but did see an item suggesting PCI bus contention.
Here is the item posted about bandwidth contention:
I installed a video blaster video camera into my usb port and am getting a very fuzzy picture, all the settings seem to be in order. When I had the parallel version of this camera the port had to be set to a higher setting (ecp) for the camera to work. Are there similar speed port settings in USB or is there another step I am missing?
In Reply to: video blaster poor picture quality Posted by andy wall on November 10, 1998 at 03:47:41:
Try turning down the hw acceleration for your video card. This is probably another PCI bus contention issue.
Brad Carpenter
Microsoft