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ISA modem and Windows 3.1

TwiggyTwiggy
edited July 2017 in Hardware
So the guy I am buying the 486 DOS computer from on Thursday, says he will throw in an ISA modem for me.

I'm still new when it comes to external modems and modem cards.

Should it be compatible with Windows 3.1 or should I ask for more info so I can make sure?
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Comments

  • BigCJBigCJ
    If it's ISA, then you'll have an internal card. On compatibility, what brand/model is it? You can look for compatible drivers on Google by searching the brand, model number and OS you want to use it with.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    If it's ISA, then you'll have an internal card. On compatibility, what brand/model is it? You can look for compatible drivers on Google by searching the brand, model number and OS you want to use it with.

    I just asked him for that info, when he replies, I will tell you.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    he just sent me these pictures:

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 3Bod2ktb00

    It's a USRobotics Sportster Model 0460

    Says there's drivers of WFW, NT3.5X and anything else that uses old ms-ras *.if files, so I guess that means 3.1 too?
  • BigCJBigCJ
    popeyewinter wrote:
    I guess that means 3.1 too?
    Not necessarily, WFW3.11 had networking components not supported by Win3.1. If it says WFW and not Win3.1, they probably did that on purpose. You can try it, the worst thing that could happen is that the card won't work and you'll have to upgrade to WFW.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    popeyewinter wrote:
    I guess that means 3.1 too?
    Not necessarily, WFW3.11 had networking components not supported by Win3.1. If it says WFW and not Win3.1, they probably did that on purpose. You can try it, the worst thing that could happen is that the card won't work and you'll have to upgrade to WFW.

    Well, unlike my Toshiba laptop, it actually has a cd drive, so upgrading will not be soo painful.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    WFW3.11 comes on floppies.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    WFW3.11 comes on floppies.

    Only floppies, no CD version?
  • BigCJBigCJ
    Not to my knowledge, no. My WFW3.11 set has 8 1.44Mb diskette images. Microsoft didn't go the route of CD for their operating systems until the 95 era. Besides, it would be an awful waste of a CD, a 700Mb disk finalized for less than 20Mb of data.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    Not to my knowledge, no. My WFW3.11 set has 8 1.44Mb diskette images. Microsoft didn't go the route of CD for their operating systems until the 95 era. Besides, it would be an awful waste of a CD, a 700Mb disk finalized for less than 20Mb of data.

    True man. True.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    this page has a CD of WFW 3.11
  • BigCJBigCJ
    popeyewinter wrote:
    this page has a CD of WFW 3.11
    What page?
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    popeyewinter wrote:
    this page has a CD of WFW 3.11
    What page?

    My bad:

    http://www.oldschooldaw.com/forums/inde ... 508#msg508
  • BigCJBigCJ
    Found that in a search myself. The DOS ISO that thread advertises looks like a hackjob, the WFW ISO probably is too. Can't find any other reference to WFW3.11 being shipped on CD, so odds are that disc image is not dumped from original media.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    Probably is.

    Eh, I have lots of floppies, and time, guess I'll do it the old fashioned way
  • BigCJBigCJ
    You could still try to make the card work under Win3.1. If it fails, then download WFW from the library. Keep us posted, k?
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    You could always just use a CD-RW instead, that way you can reuse it.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    edited April 2017
    I thought DOS couldn't read CD-RWs?
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    I will try, but if I end up going with an external modem, I won't need drivers right? Just hook it up and configure the ports correctly?
  • BigCJBigCJ
    Wouldn't know, but you would think drivers would still be needed, considering Plug-and-Play wasn't introduced until Windows 95.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    True, this modem thing may be something that'll take money months to solve.

    He said he also has a 3com one, I asked him about it just now, but it is 12:25am here, so hopefully when we see tomorrow we will find 3.x drivers.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    I would use an internal card, if possible. Keeps external ports free for other devices, like ZIP drives (although I don't know if those are supported on Win3.xx).
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    I would use an internal card, if possible. Keeps external ports free for other devices, like ZIP drives (although I don't know if those are supported on Win3.xx).

    I already found 3.1 drivers for my zip drive. Not surprising as the 100mb ones, like the one I have, are from 1994.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    I meant more along the lines of the 250Mb drive (Not sure when they came out), but my point is to use internal ports whenever possible.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    weird, this page says under Windows 3.1, hadware modems do not require special drivers...

    http://modemdriver.com/help.html
  • BigCJBigCJ
    Well that little revelation was unexpected. Still want to know the results when you start playing with your new system, though.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    Don't worry, I will surely post it.
  • thinkpadmanthinkpadman
    Firstly, Windows 3.1 and WFW only came on floppies. WFW came with a couple of extra for networking utilities and drivers. The CD image you found is just someone who placed all the files together from the floppies. It was done this way back in the day on a network drive for remote installation and Setup doesn't go asking for the next disk etc. Many Windows 3.x-era applications worked very much the same way for installation.

    DOS won't care if it's a CD-RW, it relies occasionally on the model of CD/DVD drive being used but usually the file system format of the disc.

    Modems under Windows 3.1, are a little like games under DOS for sound cards. If you pick Hayes compatible, you should be okay.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    He said the video card is Cirrus Logic 1mb PCI.

    Hopefully, it is this:

    https://www.cnet.com/products/cirrus-lo ... 5434-1-mb/
  • BigCJBigCJ
    Cirrus Logic is okay. The video from my own 486 is Cirrus Logic onboard with 512k. Their stuff I've used isn't the greatest in the world, but it certainly gets the job done.
    thinkpadman wrote:
    DOS won't care if it's a CD-RW, it relies occasionally on the model of CD/DVD drive being used but usually the file system format of the disc.
    I use CD-RWs very rarely, so I didn't know. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
  • thinkpadmanthinkpadman
    So it appears the 486 motherboard has PCI - not all do as you may know.

    Just remember that just because it's got PCI, it's not necessarily going to mean it will work before consideration of the drivers.

    My real world example was a couple of years ago or so, I was building a 486 from scratch and managed to buy a new PCI based motherboard. I bought a new 8 MB ATI Rage XL PCI video card so I could run WFW at higher resolutions with decent colour depth. The PC wouldn't start at all and it took a while to figure out as the BIOS beep codes weren't giving me the right answers. At a later stage I bought from eBay a 4 MB Matrox Millenium II PCI card and soon as I plugged it into the 486 board it just worked. The 8 MB ATI card was fine, after testing it in a Pentium 200 and Pentium III. I put it down to the PCI specification that went from 2.0 to 2.1 that occurred with the original Pentiums.

    So if you manage to find one of these Matrox Millenium cards or a Diamond Viper, I'd recommend it if you want to upgrade it. Some people have placed an early 3D PCI card into a 486, though that was really to see whether it would work. Generally there's little value if it does, as many 3D games require a Pentium as a minimum and the 486 processor becomes the bottleneck.
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