Very Computer

I've recently begun trying to get vgetty to work with my USR Sportster
Voice 33.6 in order to be able to receive faxes and voicemail on my
system, but I've been having little luck.  vgetty loads up and I can see
it initializing my modem at boot time, and I think it's handling the
sendfax stuff OK (I've only initiated faxes to my own number, so I know
it dials out OK, but I've no idea about actually sending).  The voice
functions are another matter, though -- I can't get them working.  The
supplied "vm" program is doing SOMETHING -- when I try to either play or
record an existing file, the modem lights blink for a while, in basically
the sort of pattern I'd expect for the operation I'm trying; but I can't
hear anything in playback.  Thus, I don't know if I've actually recorded
anything, though I doubt it, since when I specify telephone handset
recording, I still get a dialtone on my phone.  (Under Win95 with
QuickLink, the dialtone goes away and I hear a pre-record "beep" on the
handset when I record.)  Files I "record" under Linux are reported to be
invalid under QuickLink, but that could just be different file formats.
I'm using the latest mgetty/vgetty package (0.7.3 of vgetty, though the
log file indicates 0.7.3 at one point and 0.4.b3 at another -- could I
have conflicting files lurking somewhere?  Where?).  The log files
indicate that the software has successfully detected a Sportster Voice,
but also assorted errors, including "signal 15," "junk on the line"
(despite the fact that I compiled with the option that's supposed to
correct this one), and others.

So:

1) Has anybody who's gotten this to work have any tips for me?
2) Is it likely that a firmware update will fix this?  I'm thinking of
   upgrading with the X2 firmware in a week or two, and if this will
   get voice working it'll be another reason to do the upgrade.

Thanks for any advice.

--
Rod Smith                                 Author of:

http://php.indiana.edu/~rodsmith          "OS/2 Soundcard Summary"
NOTE: Remove "uceprotect" from address to e-mail me

Hi Rod,

Quote:

> 1) Has anybody who's gotten this to work have any tips for me?

Quote:> 2) Is it likely that a firmware update will fix this?  I'm thinking of
>    upgrading with the X2 firmware in a week or two, and if this will
>    get voice working it'll be another reason to do the upgrade.

Here's explanation of the bug and how my fix works:

  Earlier versions of USR voice modem have packaged GSM-compressed voice
stream into 38-byte frames. Unfortunately, because of a bug in firmware,
some frames got corrupted and therefore made it impossible to play-back
recorded messages (they just sound like noise when played back).
  So, in my hack I have added a function which verifies validity of
38-bytes frames and simply drops corrupted ones.
  This bug is specific to pre-X2 modems that use GSM compression. USR
modems
with GSM-B compression (GSM unBugged ? :) are fine and do not use packet
wrapping (use AT#VCI? to find out what you have).

  If anyone is interested in creating a patch for vgetty, drop me a
note,
I will try to help. Unfortunately, I cannot do much development now
because
we just had a baby a month ago and my time is really tight.

Eugene.
--
Eugene Anikin                 http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/anikin

____________________________________________________________________
Cascade Design Automation   - one easy step from Language to Layout

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I can't help you on your voice and fax problem, but I can tell you
about my experiences with the USR.  I will assume the modem you
currently have is the same model of internal USR voice 33.6 I used
to have.

I started out with an internal USR voice 33.6.  It has done a complete
lockup with the modem off hook (not hung up).  It will just sit there
and with the modem off hook I can't dial out etc and it is completely
locked up requiring a power cycle (reset doesn't do it).  If you want
to see what I'm talking about atm1l3s11=0dt314  (receiver on, loud,
s11=0 (important), dial and tone number).  The first tone it produces
is stuck and if the modem's internal you just turn it off and back on.
USR has never adminted to a bug or anything in all my conversations.

Anyway, I got a USR 56k external later.  Wierd problems, I finally
traced it down to, when in data and connected, do a full upload.
After a while the modem will hangup and do a complete reset.  I know
because atin (n=1 to 11 or so), reports last connection, status of
registers, I can change them and they will be changed back.  If I disable
V.42 operation it works fine (with the speed penality).  USR was no
help, they said to flash it with the newest eprom, (remember
external 56K X2 already).  Ok, so I got out a old 386 from the ba*t,
hooked it up and installed windows.  Me being curios I hooked a null
modem cable from it to my linux computer and the modem to the linux
computer, used terminal to login, compiled dip to record everything
that was sent back and forth, I had to connect some wires to make
the USR software "think" carrier detect was there.

To make a long story short, the 386 had 8250 uarts, the USR update
wizard was trying to do 57600 over them, and while doing whatever
it did to prepare the info for the modem on the upload (flash process)
couldn't keep up and trashed the eprom.  The modem was unusable and
the update wizard needed to identify it to do a upgrade, USR solution
was to sent it in, my soltion was to get a faster computer, program
dip to "look" for the identification strings, since I had everything
loged from before I just returned that info, untill it got
to the point of actually doing the upgrade and then it talked to the
modem.  (remember I had a linux computer inbetween the modem and
the windows computer doing to update).  The flash was successfull,
(the update wizard didn't think so, but I  saw  the modem say it
checked out, (everything was logged)).

56k external brought up to date and has the same problem.  I
should have know better, but I used the USR upgrade program
for a 56K voice internal for my 33.6 that worked mostly fine.
Result?  The first two modems report 32K instead of 64K (ati7)
that it should have like the rest of my modems and USR said that also.
Instead of doing a reset/hangup on uploads it would
freeze.  Tell it to drop the carrier and dial again and it
would do the same.  That modem got sent in for repaire.  I got
another one of the same model (plug and play so it had a different
id, and it would hangup/reset on uploads.  That one got sent back in
and I got it back durrint the UPS strike.  I finally got it in a couple
days back and what do you think it did?  If you have been following
along and think it is going to have problems on continuous uploading,
that wasn't the case.  The current state of the modem is, run dip,
setup the port, type a command to the modem, sometimes after much
delay it will return the command I typed.  Once or twice it also
returned an OK, but that is vary rare.  When I do get it to dial out,
it never returns any text, but outgoing text shows up on the other end
after a few seconds delay.  Also if it matters the modem had two bent
jumpper pins.

I guess when I send an e-mail to USR I need to tell them to have
a techinician call me, as they closed their voice tech support
saying to use electronic support instead.  If anyone else is having
similar problems it would be nice to hear from you.
cc any replies to me.

                +---------------------------------+
                |      David Fries                |

                +---------------------------------+

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:
: 1)  DO NOT DO THE UPGRADE!
:
: I can't help you on your voice and fax problem, but I can tell you
: about my experiences with the USR.  I will assume the modem you
: currently have is the same model of internal USR voice 33.6 I used
: to have.
:
: To make a long story short, the 386 had 8250 uarts, the USR update
: wizard was trying to do 57600 over them, and while doing whatever
: it did to prepare the info for the modem on the upload (flash process)
: couldn't keep up and trashed the eprom.  The modem was unusable and

I have an USR-Courier V5 Everything and did the X2-Upgrade using
the Software I downloaded from their web-site.

The utility, called "Update" or some such, was a plain DOS command-
line-utility. I just copied it to a DOS bootdisk and booted from
their to do the update. Like I have to do with the config-utility
for my network-card too.

It has options to set the port, irq and speed.

The update failed first time I tried. Setting the speed to 9600
worked fine. No problems whatsoever since then.

Doesn't "Update Wizzard" have options to set the speed?

Seems that "update crap" has timing-problems running at
higher port-speeds.

Or maybe you have to change the system-settings within Windoze to
use a lower port-speed?

Just wondering.

Regards,
Friedhelm

--
Microsoft is NOT the answer. Microsoft is the Question.
The answer is: "NO!"
----------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:> Anyway, I got a USR 56k external later.  Wierd problems, I finally
> traced it down to, when in data and connected, do a full upload.
> After a while the modem will hangup and do a complete reset.

I've not had the upgraded modem for long, but so far it's been working
fine, giving me connections of between 48kbps and 52kbps.  Unfortunately,
the upgrade hasn't helped on the reason I posted originally: vgetty
doesn't work.  I suspect that now it's not recognizing the upgraded model;
here are the last two lines from the vgetty log file:

08/28 23:00:29 yS1  detecting voice modem type
08/28 23:00:30 yS1  no voice modem detected: Unknown error

I plan to dig into the source code one of these days and have a look for
hard-coded rules for recognizing modems, and make appropriate changes.
Unfortunately, I likely won't have time to do much with this for at least
a week.  If anybody has further tips on this, please do tell.

--
Rod Smith                                 Author of:

http://php.indiana.edu/~rodsmith          "OS/2 Soundcard Summary"