Is this a hardware modem?

[eab]

At newegg they have a creative blaster v.92 modem for $20.00 is this a hardware modem. It seems to good to be true!

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=18&manufactory=1137&DEPA=1

also they have a V.90 US robotics modem for $40.00 is that a hardware modem also I belive so just have to make sure.

[Gresyth]

http://65.119.30.151/productimage/25-117-102-01.JPG

Looks like hardware to me...
:rolleyes:

[Avatar28]

No, it's not. Two good ways to tell. 1) It's cheap. 2) There's really only one chip on it. A controller (hardware) based modem will usually have several of the large chips on it.

[eab]

is the us robotics modem I talked about a winmodem too?

[turd]

Really the only ways to tell are to have the model number and look it up, a picture or if it is described as a hardware modem. The diff is that the hardware modem does the associated processing on board and the software modem shifts the processing to the CPU. There used to be performance issues with the software modem shifting an additional load to the CPU but with todays systems I would say this is no longer an issue. The issues are with needing to use the modem with non windows systems, and even now some software modems have been ported to unix based systems. And another issue seems to be that the market is full of inexpensive, poorly supported (driver issues) no-name software modems and with hardware modems established venders seem to be the norm.

[Avatar28]

Not sure about the USR modem. Do you have a model or a picture? Or is it described as a controller based modem? Another way to tell is that if it says it will work in DOS then it is DEFINITELY a hardware modem. If you really want to be sure about it, go find an external modem that connects via serial port. ALL of those will be hardware based.

[Kingslayer]

That is a win-modem.