Okay, I have a computerless friend and I gave him an old P1 133 Mhz 32MB RAM machine and installed Win98SE on it...Everything is hunky dory, till I try to get him on the web. I was using one of the free for a while AOL disks and it just wouldnt work (AOL didn't really say anything error wise other than to call them) So then I try my dial-up account that I use for myself and it says no dial-tone...check the cables change the modem (5 different modems in all, 2 KNOWN good ones for sure).

So then I grab my ol Win 3.11 laptop and unplug the line from the PC and plug it in mylaptop dial up to my dial-up account perfect, no problems repeatedly...so now I am confused. My best reasoning is it is something about his phone wiring that my laptop could get around by the PC couldn't quite make it

BOOM! now the PC is at my house and WHAT!? Still "no dial-tone" So I figure it must be an OS issue and I pop RedHat on it...no dial tone. Then I pop slackware on it...no dial tone. (also trying all 5 modems on each OS and multiple phone cords and checking w/ my laptop to see If i could connect w/ that which I could every time) So now I am really confused...but I figured hey the Floppy controllor on this thing is broken...so maybe some part of the ISA bus and the COM ports (one modem is an external one, 3 ISA, 1 PCI winmodem that has a linux driver that i have used before) So I take another old computer...and here is where it gets wierd...I totally switch computers

The ONLY pieces that are the same on these computers is the sound card and mouse and that is it...taking either of these out makes no difference. And I did a fresh install of 98 on this new computer too and still no dial tone...yet with exactly the same wiring my laptop connects. I know that the external modem is good as I am on the net with it on my main SuSE/XP machine right now! So what gives!??!!

note: All of this happened over a period of about 2 months...so it wasn't caused by coincidentally someone calling as we try to dial. I know it isn't linux specific but all logic fails me here...I mean how can it not be solved by swapping hardware OR software?

Your computers are fried. Buy new computers.