If I'm understanding your situation correctly, which I may not be,
there are two things you want to do:
1. Have a working modem and working sound card, and
2. Know what's using what resources on your machine.
First, let me clarify the reason you have A & B as well as 1-4
(forgive me if I'm telling you something you know). Com ports 1-4 (in some
cases even more!) are DOS devices or addresses; they are not physical serial
ports. In the old days of machines with one or two physical ports and most
people using not even two, it was no problem. Newer machines like yours,
which probably has two physical serial ports (A & B) built onto the
motherboard, call them A & B to avoid confusion.
Normally, Com1 and Com3 share IRQ4, Com2 and Com4 share IRQ3.
Therefore, you have to be very careful if you use Com3 or 4!
Your first step is to go into setup and see if your BIOS supports
turning off (disabling) either or both serial ports. If so, be sure that
Port A is enabled and assigned to Com1. Then you can use it for your modem
as Com 1.
Serial port B should be checked also. It sounds as if your sound
card may be using IRQ3. Since you had a modem on 1, and probably a
bus(PS2)-style mouse that didn't use a serial port, this is not an
unreasonable choice.
If you're running Windows95, by the way, you can check the IRQ and
other resources used by your devices by right-clicking on "My Computer",
selecting Properties, and then clicking open the Device Manager. For each
device listed, you can see its property sheet, and the resources tab will
tell you what it's using.
If your sound card is using IRQ3, by the way, you might see if you
can just change it, via jumpers or software, to another IRQ. If you're using
only one parallel port, IRQ5 may be available, and many sound cards use it.
IRQ10 and 11 are often usable, too. Doing that would leave your modem where
it is, and probably functional.
.....Paul
Marjorie Jordan <mjordan@ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>I recently removed an internal modem which was using Com 1. I added an
>external modem which had been configured to use Com 2. It is attached to
>serial port B on the computer. Since I made this change, my sound card
>isn't working and the modem won't initate so I assume that there is an IRQ
>conflict.
>
>I would like to assign the external modem to Com 1 since I took the internal
>one out.
>Would this be a problem? Would I use Serial port A? I didn't do the
>original configuration of the external modem, so I do not know what to look
>at. What do I change? (just control panel/ports?)
>
>Can anyone help? I cannot find the manual that came with the modem. Thanks
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Paul Heymont Automotive HS, Brooklyn NY Social Studies/English
VOICE: 718/941-4548 FAX/DATA: 718/462-2910
E-MAIL: phey@panix.com WEB PAGE: http://www.panix.com/~phey
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