GRiDCase 3 Modem

[nathan]

So I recently acquired a GRiDCase 3 that is in beautiful shape, except that its modem doesn't seem to work properly. Using the CrossTalk software (on EEPROM), I can't seem to get it to dial, and using the "POrts" command to select COM1 through COM4 just reports "No hardware found" or something along those lines.

I then proceeded to open up the machine, and located the modem next to the battery compartment. The flex cable from the motherboard to the phone jack seems intact, and the double-row 0.1" header that connects the modem to the motherboard seems clean. I made sure that the modem was fully seated, and even pulled it out and reinstalled it a few times to make sure.

So, any ideas? Barring that, does anyone have a spare GRiD modem? Thanks!

 

[leeb]

If you have Win3.x try talking to it with Terminal... and the 'AT' commands...

If you have a connection to it, type AT<enter> and you should see 'OK' or '1'...
If you see 'OK' you can force connection to the phone line by 'ATA'... (answer)
'ATDTxxxxxxx' will attempt to dial the number xxxxxxx...
Presuming the connection to the phone is good...

 

[nathan]

Hi Leeb, thanks for the reply. This machine isn't likely to run Windows anytime soon considering it's running a 4.77MHz 80C86 CPU

I'm plenty familiar with the AT command set, I'm thinking this is more of a hardware problem given the behavior of the software that came with the machine

 

[nathan]

Problem solved, turns out that the modem is powered off by default in order to save power. Clever clever, GRiD Engineers, but you sure caused this guy some issues 28 years later

Typing MODE MODEM=ON at the DOS command prompt powers the modem back up.

Also, if you try to use CrossTalk (XTALK), the default dialing prefix doesn't seem to work, I replaced it with a regular reset (ATZ|~ATDT) and everything worked great