I'm partl;y to blame for the lack of modem setting documentation that
Rich Morin was looking for. (I saw the mesage Fri/Sat but tried to take
thw weekend off... :-)

See, I've been farting around with modems in the BBS world for so long,
and I think I've worked with most of them pertsonally, some for
protracted periods of time, I just glance at the command sets and set
'em up and walk away. I don' tmean to boast, its not necessarily a good
thing. (The BBS/FidoNet world, all our software KNOWS ABOUT modems,
rather than the IP world, which assumes copper. BBSing is just more
tightly coupled (!) to modems/phone lines for historic reasons...)

I will change this, and when I come across a new modem, I'll write it
down and pass it on. I have some "how-to" docs pretty far along the
usability scale (updated substantially in the last three days; ftp to
wps.com) I will add a how-to-modem doc. Here's a start:


HOW TO SETUP A MODEM FOR IP USE:

The goal:

Almost without exception, TCP/IP hardware doesn't understand modems, or
AT commands, etc. The exceptions are so narrow I will assume here they
don't exist.

The goal is to make the modem look like a pure RS-232 interface; copper
wire with wiggly signals, and two sets of status lines. (If you care,
they're the session level DTR=session COMMAND and CD=session STATUS;
DTR=ON enable, off=disconnect/reset. CD=ON means connected. Transport
level, RTS/CTS is flow control.)

Here are the major functional blocks I look for in the manual, and find
the associated command, and set it:

AUTOANSWER:		ATS0=1
NO COMMAND ECHO:	ATE0
NO RSULT CODES:		ATQ1
(speaker off)		ATM0

These functions are also required, but less standard. I'll just list the
functions here.

FIXED-DTE RATE:		MANY TIMES it's AT&B1
DISCONNECT/RESE ON DTR:	MANY TIMES it's AT&D3 or AT&D2

.. and when you are done, you want to save the settings in NVRAM. Some
have switches. Some have both, that interact (ala Sportster). 

SAVE SETINGS:		AT&W &W0 &W1 (the &W0 and &W1 might not exist
			but they never hurt(


BEFOR YOU START: I bet you played with your modem. You will insist that
you did not, but you changed something. Do this EXACTLY:

* Set your terminal program to the actual fixed-DTE speed you want to
use (usually 38,400 baud)

* Type "AT" to your modem. If it doesnt say 

Syntactically speaking; they're usally pretty loose. The command strings
below work exactly, but you can compress otu the spaces and use
lower/upper case.

USR Courier:

AT 
-- 
 Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems --  San Francisco, Calif.
 The Little Garden -- admin@admin.tlg.rg.net -- S.F. Bay Area Internetwork