[micha schraven]

My parents got a serial modem, I havent seen it yet, but by their description it seems like a serial port modem.

They have an imac. Imacs dont have serial ports.

I already bought a Keyspan USB->PDA adapter.
these are built for PALMtops but in my opinion it doesn't matter what serial equipment you hook up on it.

Is it an advertisementtrick to sell one "specialised for PDA's" and the other twice-as-expensive usb/serial adapter designed for everything else and palms?

H E L P

[ranga]

The Keyspan PDA adapter works fine as a plain old serial port. I use mine
all the time to connect to the console of servers and routers in the test
lab at work. The adapter works great under OS X and OS 9.

The reason the "serial" adapter costs twice as much is that it comes with
two serial ports instead of just the one in the PDA adapter.

--ranga

[ 02-08-2002: Message edited by: ranga ]

[andi*pandi]

I might ask what's wrong with the modem that came with iMac...

why have an external modem at all, unless it's cable?

[micha schraven]

It is a cable modem.

[motti]

Doesn't this cable modem have an usb or ethernet interface?

[fulmer]

yeah, it better be an ethernet modem. Talk to your folks. If they're not computer people, they might have gotten something that a tech guy/girl dumped on them.

a non tech savvy friend just got bellsouth dsl. he wanted to use entourage to check his email. he spent a long time talking to 3 different bellsouth techs on the phone. they tried lots of stuff and also told him they don't support entourage. well, he called me up and in 2 minutes over the phone I got it working. Be wary of tech support!

[Camelot]

I've never seen a Cable modem with a serial interface - at least not one for connection to your computer. Almost all of them are Ethernet-based, some of them support USB.

You'll be seriously bandwidth-starved if trying to use a cable modem off a serial line.

The chances are either your parents didn't correctly identify the port, or that the modem does have a serial port (typically for a console hookup for configuration, etc), but also an ethernet port for hookup to your LAN.

[micha schraven]

bandwithstarved hehe

Well, it is their first internet-experience. They are very unexperienced with computers. They don't like paying all of their wages to the phonecompany, so now they took cable.

The cablecompany has the worst reputation of the country, I had a cablemodem from them 2 years ago, I found out that really NOTHING has changed in that time. Still they send serial modems to Imac-users, still they send the WRONG serial modem that doesn't even give a "okay I have connection" light, still they act like this problem has never happened before and they have many satisfied customers (right ! with 2 kilobyte a second !!!!). They only changed their name in this time. I hate them and never want to deal with them in my life again ..I sold my television for this reason.

2 years ago they ripped me off for 600 US$.
It gives you a reason to become filthy rich and start another cablecompany next to theirs with free internet just to bug them till they are bankrupt and come crying on their knees to make you stop

maybe I should not post this. Oh well..