On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote: > On Tuesday, March 29, 2011 02:07:46 pm Robert Heller wrote: >> Unless you spend serious bucks, ALL *PCI* modems are win modems (there >> are one or two very high-end 'industrial grade' PCI 'hardware' modems). >> Many older *ISA* modems were 'hardware' modems and were meant for old >> i586 and i486 systems that lacked the CPU cycles to handle a >> controllerless modem (winmodem). And ISA slots are pretty much >> non-existent on modern motherboards. > > I have a couple of 'real hardware' PCI modems, neither of which were very expensive. One is an ActionTec, and I bought it new-old-stock for $15. The other is by Digitan, a DS560-558 that I got with a Sun Ultra 10 workstation. Both are Lucent Venus chipsets and are full hardware controller PCI modems. > > I have a third one here somewhere that is a more expensive one, a Multitech, I think, but I haven't been able to lay hold on it. There is a Multitech on eBay right now for $19.99; a real deal for an industrial-grade modem. > > For more information about modem chipsets, see http://www.modemsite.com/56k/chipset.asp and > http://techpatterns.com/forums/about483.html Not so much for laptops, but for anyone with servers, RocketPort makes the cream of the crop. They make fabulous 8-port serial PCI and PCI-e cards that just work, with all the standard modem software. USB modems are going for less than $20 these days, and may present a workable alternative if our original poster cannot find Winmodem drivers.