Keep the motherboard and ditch the Alcatel. Call your ISP and demand an Ethernet modem, citing your troubles with that POS.

The Alcatel is 90% of the problem.

Bill

: I currently have an AMD1300 running on an ASUS Motherboard with a VIA KT133A Chipset (A7V133) and am using W98SE. I have all sorts of problems with USB devices, first I got a Alcatel Broadband Modem and after trying all the VIA tips and tricks (except for updating the bios with seemed just too risky!) I found that only by getting a Belkin USB PCI card I could solve the probems. Next I got a USB Platronics mic which when plugged into the Belkin immediately crashed the entire system, I couldn't even get into safe mode so I had to reformat. After trying various things and reformatting 9 times! I found that I could get them both to sort of work if I plugged the alcatel into the belkin PCI card and the platronics into the motherboard but still the modem seems to get 'lost' every few minutes and I must wait up to a minute for it to load a page (this on a broadband connection) after which its okay for a while.

: My question is would it be worth going for a new motherboard with a different chipset? Obviously I want to use my current setup as much as possible so I was looking at the EPOX 8K3A+ motherbaord with the VIA Apollo KT333 AGPset. Has anyone got this and can tell me of their success/ failure or can someone suggest alternatives?

: Thanks for your help