I'm afraid I got a little carried away talking about the phone system and
didn't say enough about solutions!

By all means try and get the phone company to fix the lines, but don't hold
your breath waiting.  They probably won't do very much if the line
satisfies voice grade service - and you may not want to pay for special
data conditioning.

Buy a good modem - I recommend USR Courier, not the Sportster.

Read the modem manual very carefully and figure out the settings for error
correction.  Configure this so that the modem will ONLY connnect in
error-connecting mode.  The default on most modems is to drop back to no
error-correction if it can't negotiate either V.42 or MNP.  This, of
course, is exactly what you don't want - if the line is too noisy to
negotiate error-correction, it's certainly too noisy to use without it!  My
recollection is that the Courier modem will allow you to do this, and there
are quite a few others that will.  You only need to do it at one end, of
course - I suggest at the HP3000 end.  This way, you will always have an
error-free connection (within the limits of error-correction).  You may,
however, have a devil of a time establishing your connection!

PC Magazine, from time to time, tests modems and usually goes into
considerable detail about this process and rates modems on how easily they
connect on noisy lines, and how well they stay connected.

If your modems won't allow you to do this, a less good alternative is to
switch on the negotiation message display at the originating modem.  This
will tell you whether you got an error-correcting connection or not.  If
not, you just try again.

John D. Alleyn-Day
Alleyn-Day International
408-286-6421   408-286-6474 (Fax)
[log in to unmask]       http://www.Alleyn-Day.com
"You have to be in the right place at the right time
but unfortunately I was absent the day they
explained how that's done" - Herb Caen.