I just bought a new U.S.Robotics 56K PCI Fax Modem to replace my 5 year old U.S.Robotics modem. I have a K6Bv3+/66 System Board. The old modem was installed on the first slot (ISA3) but the new one does not fit in the slot, even the metal bracket goes the wrong way. I installed the new modem in PCI4 and it works but not properly. What am I doing wrong? ISA1 thru 3 are the Com ports. How can I use one of them? Thanks for all the help I can get. Normande

try uninstalling the drivers, don't reboot yet, then install the new drivers, then reboot. (also you could have a conflict with the old drivers)

======================================================================================== Whoa! This has nothing to do with drivers. Normande, you are getting thrown by a few terms and possibly a bit of mis-understanding. The ISA slots are NOT com ports and they are not the same as your PCI slots. The ISA bus is a throw back from Pentium systems and earlier mother boards. It uses the system bus which allows the transfer of information between the CPU and other hardware. The PCI slots have thier own bus that operates at a higher frequency and are therefor faster pieces of hardware for the CPU to communicate with. Your com ports have no direct relation to either of these in terms of the bus archetecture. In other words, PCI and ISA 1 have nothing specifically to do with COM1. The use of COM ports just happens to be what a modem uses to interface with an analog phone line but nothing beyond that. Once the data is received from the phone line into the modem, the modem then takes that information and sends it to the CPU through one of these bus archetectures I mentioned. The PCI modem doesn't fit into the ISA slot because they designed it that way to prevent someone from accidentally plugging it into the wrong bus. If any of this is still confusing or you have more questions feel free to email me at borellijohn@qwest.net borelli34

borelli34...Many thanks for the help. I have my old modem back in ISA3 again because the new modem would not function the same way more than once while in the PCI4 slot. I guess the motherboard I have is just too old for the newer modems. Im not giving up though, I am going to be experimenting with it more today. The old modem does not fit in the PCI slots either. I am going to save your email address and let you know what happens. Many many thanks. Normande

Normande, Most mother boards that have both ISA and PCI buses share one of the ISA and PCI slots meaning that you cannot use devices in ISA3 and PCI4 (for example). This also means that some PCI devices will not work properly in this slot because of the handshaking going on between the two buses. Try the modem in PCI1. borelli34

borelli34.....I reinstalled it in PCI3 and its working perfectly now. Although, when I tried to use "Add Hardware" in the control panel and directed it to my CDROM for the drivers it checked the CDROM and then it told me that the modem could not be installed. But as I said before, its working perfectly now. I don't understand what is going on but I do know this, I am going into Spokane this afternoon and doing some motherboard shopping. Thanks again. Normande