Conexant SoftK56 MonoPak PCI DFVS

Soft V.90/K56flex PCI Single-Chip Chipsets

Usage: To find other modems with the same chipset.

All drivers, downloads & info on this site are found via the modem.
Each Modem Manufacturers’ page also has external web-links, where available.

General Information

Originated by Rockwell on 14 Oct 1998 & developed by Conexant, this has been one of the company’s most successful chipsets. It is essentially a PCI-bus & telephone line interface, containing neither DSP nor controller functions in firmware, both of which are handled by software on the host computer. Whilst this originally limited the modem to Windows, Conexant has introduced driver support for the Linux platform in 2002.

Rockwell metamorphosed into Conexant in 1999. The new company aquired a new PCI Vendor-ID (from 127A to 14F1, officially with 2.07 driver, enforced with 2.08, April 1999), and this esoteric, technical detail has resulted in much driver grief, as many drivers that should load will not, due to mis-matched PCI IDs. The new company also changed the driver modem-name, which also caused problems. If an Windows driver with the old name is updated, the modem name will change, and will need to be altered; go:

• Control Panel
• Dial-Up Networking, or Network Connections
• Properties (via File menu)
• Change the ‘Rockwell’ modem to ‘Conexant’
• Press OK.

The HSF MonoPak were a co-development with the RS56-PCI twin-chip chipsets. Just to make life more interesting, the low-power version (RS56L-PCI) also uses a single-chip. All 3 have identical PCI IDs & should, therefore, have inter-changeable drivers. This is how the PCI-Interface family looks:

• HSF MonoPak - R6787, R6793
• RS56L-PCI - R6794
• RS56-PCI - 11235-14

There has also been more than one chip used within this chipset:

• R6787-12 : Rockwell DF : ID 2003
• R6787-12 : Rockwell DFT : ID 2004
• R6787-12 : Rockwell DFVS : ID 2005
• R6787-12 : Rockwell DFTS : ID 2006
• R6793-12 : Conexant DF : ID 2013
• R6793-12 : Conexant DFT : ID 2014
• R6793-11 : Conexant DFVS : ID 2015
• R6793-11 : Conexant DFTS : ID 2016

The Reference Designs for these chipsets were pin-compatible with their equivalent HCF (controller-less) MonoPak chipsets, allowing one set of work to produce 2 modems. The HCF was the better chipset & sold at a premium, although the difference in cost between the chips was negligible. Drivers are not inter-changeable between designs.

Extra Info

Country (how to find)

AT+GCI command to select (depends on options placed at install time in Registry)

Known Problems

(Windows XP, 2000, Millennium): the phone line may be disconnected if a DVD/CD-ROM drive is configured to PIO mode (the default on some systems) and is in use. Configure to DMA mode (Device Manager, usually IDE ATA/ATAPI Channels, Primary and/or Secondary channel). Extra info: PIO is an old transfer-mode which ties up the CPU whilst moving data bit-by-bit across the computer bus; DMA uses a DMA-controller to rapidly shift blocks of data in parallel with the CPU, and was explicitly designed to solve the congestion problems caused by PIO transfers.

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