Using modems has been close to the core of our focus in re-exploring 1990s tech since we started working on The Serial Port back in 2023. After we got our simulated dial-up ISP working, I had been thinking about doing a demo of combining multiple modems together. We knew multilink PPP was a thing – I had used it for bonding two connections previously, and it came up in our conversation with Brian Lloyd, who was involved in the PPP standards at the IETF.
So, I had been sitting on the idea for awhile – I thought using 4 dial-up modems in a retro setup would be really neat, likely on Windows 2000. In September of 2025, we finally decided to make this happen. We first got our Total Control online in late 2024, but it wasn’t until late summer 2025 that we finally got it working in a reliable usable way after doing some fine tuning with the IAD and completing the Netserver setup. So, we had the ISP side presumably ready to support LOTS of modems.
On the client side, we had several multiport serial cards we had been saving for this type of project. Specifically, a BocaBoard BB2008(?) 8-port ISA card as well as a Digi ISA card with 16-port breakout box. Unfortunately we found out that neither of these cards would work for this project as they didn’t have Win9x/2k support. It looked like they would only work for what they were built for: MajorBBS in DOS and some other antique platforms like Xenix or SCO Unix.
We thought we were on the right track by just jumping ahead to a PCI card. We found the LAVA Quattro-PCI 4-port card. This is a really neat product, as its still sold and supported by LAVA, a Canadian company. We picked up one of these cards on eBay and planned to install it in a Win98 machine and get the project going:
Unfortunately we were way off base, and didn’t understand the variances in PCI cards. This card is a PCI 3v, which doesn’t match PCI 5v which was “normal” on a desktop PC at the time…
