Massive Modem Problems with iMac G4

monokitty · Aug 29th, 2004, 12:08 PM

I recently converted a friend to the world of Apple after their PC had a major meltdown. She ended up buying a demo-displayed iMac G4 800 MHz w/768 MB of RAM running Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2.3.

Problem is, since she's on dial-up, she obviously relies on the iMac's modem to connect to the Internet (at least for now until she migrates to Hi-Speed).

The modem will NOT stay connected! After 10-20 minutes of being online, the modem will "unexpectantly hang-up." I've tweaked Internet settings, etc, nothing seems to change the situation.

Orginally, I thought that upgrading to Panther 10.3 might solve the problem, and I'll be upgrading her to Panther tonight, but could that solve the problem? I also told her to use a different phone line cable (because worn out/damaged phone cables can terminate Internet connections prematurely), but we have yet to try that - again, going to try that tonight as well.

Any suggestions? I told her how reliable Macs are compared to PC's and I really hope that I don't have to tell her that her internal modem is screwed (V.92).

Jason H · Aug 29th, 2004, 12:37 PM

Yup.
My ibook works the same way with its internal modem and My beige is a little bit better with its external 56k (serial)
Get used to it.

The Doug · Aug 29th, 2004, 01:22 PM

I remember when I had my FP iMac there were a lot of people on the Apple Discussion boards talking about the internal dial-up modem disconnecting frequently, unexpectedly. It only happened to me a few times, luckily.

You should probably search the Boards and maybe MacWorld et al. to see what the buzz is these days. If I recall correctly some people solved their problems by playing with modem scripts. I don't know if the problem was solved in Panther. Also check to see if there are any Knowledge Base documents about it.

monokitty · Aug 29th, 2004, 11:32 PM

So, I installed 10.3 Panther on her iMac, and we've gone 2 hours without a disconnect - looking good. I'm impressed.

The Doug · Aug 30th, 2004, 08:16 AM

Great news - that obviously means that Apple listened and put in a fix. I kind of suspected that was the case, because when I scanned through the Discussion Boards yesterday, there was hardly a mention of the disconnect problem. Whereas, 18 months ago there were many threads about it...