Response from USR to "Sportster +FHS:25 problem"

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Hi,

On Fri, Oct 02, 1998 at 11:11:32PM +0200, Kurt Garloff wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 02, 1998 at 10:06:01PM +0200, Gert Doering wrote:
> > comment from USR/3com (truncated to hide a few things that might be NDA).
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[..]
> Maybe I'm not used enough to reading those kind of email, but it's hard to
> even see that they admit there's a bug. It could also be interpreted as
> ,,hey, you stupid people, fix your software!`` No statement that their
> firmware will be fixed.

There are some more comments in the original mail that *could* be
interpreted as "we have fixed a similar 'issue' in a different product".
I did not forward this as part of my work with USR involves a
non-disclosure agreement, and I'm afraid that those parts could fall
under it.  (Programming info doesn't, but data about new products / 
new beta versions does).

I'm not really sure whether they acknowledge this as a 'problem', but I
think so.

> Grrr! What a stupid attitude. 

Don't be too negative.  Actually, it's not too bad.

> They will never reach the quality of free software!

This might be true.  If I could look at the source, I could have sent them
a patch :-) -- that way, I had to talk my way through two levels of "I
cannot reproduce this, why are you using a non-german firmware anyway?"

> (And to conclude: Anybody who wants to buy a Modem should rather something
> else, like Elsa (I don't know about their modem support, but their driver
> and firmware support for VGA is really good) or ... )

I disagree.  Elsa's modems are good, but their fax part isn't perfect
either, and I haven't been to lucky talking to their support so far about
it (it sometimes just fails at connection setup with +FHNG:70 with no
apparent reason).

The USR Couriers are, except for one small issue, *VERY* good fax 
modems, and they are *VERY* reliable for mass faxing (>1000 faxes a day,
distributed over 5 Couriers, at a customer's site).  I am on USR's beta
test list, and I expect the last remaining problems to be ironed out soon.

The USR Sportsters are a differnet issue -- they seem to be designed for
the mass market - those people that buy Rockwell modems - and they are not
really "grown up" yet.  Quite good for data, actually, but many stupid
things remaining in the fax firmware.

[..]
> > Could all of you who have been bitten by USR Sportsters and +FHS:25
> > (or +FHS:27) error codes please test "modem-quirks 0x20" will fix this and
> > report to me or to the list?
> 
> Well, I had a workaround (+FCC=1,5,0,2,0,0,0,5) which worked for me and I
> will now try (+FCC=1,5,0,2,0,0,0,) as suggested by USR/3Com. I have not the
> slightest doubt, that modem-quirks MQ_USR_FMINSP will work, too.

Please try anyway.  Then I can add this to the mgetty docs, so further
users won't have to patch or experiment...

gert
-- 
USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
                                                           //www.muc.de/~gert/
Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert@greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert.doering@physik.tu-muenchen.de