Pace ISDN Professional

We haven't covered ISDN products before in What PC?, largely because they're not usually pitched at consumers. Read the Home Highway review on page 32, and you'll see that BT has other ideas. But if you want Home Highway, you'll also need an ISDN terminal adaptor and Pace has a new one on the market.

The Pace ISDN Professional TA (Terminal Adaptor) looks just like its desktop modem sibling - a squat grey case with the Pace logo embossed on top and a strip of LEDs along the front. We're tired of saying this but why can't other manufacturers follow Pace's example and label their LEDs in plain English? After all, what would you rather have - a little light labelled 'RXD' or one labelled 'Receive'?

Setting up a TA is much like setting up a modem and with the cables plugged in, all that remains is to switch on the PC and point Windows at the driver.

Not all ISPs support ISDN access and even fewer support line aggregation for 128Kbits/s connection. We tested the TA with Dircon - an ISP that supports both for no extra cost, and to take advantage of this you reconfigure the Dial-up Networking connection to use a different telephone number.

We hit the first stumbling block straight away. By default, the Pace Professional is installed with a driver that only allows single 64Kbits/s connections. 128Kbits/s connections need a different driver, but the manual fails to mention this. It's easily resolved by adding a 'new' modem but we think the documentation ought to explain this in more detail. It's a minor quibble though and once resolved, the Pace Professional worked a treat and we made 128Kbits/s connections with ease.

If you're prepared to do more fiddling with drivers than is strictly necessary, the Pace Professional should serve you well if you've caught the ISDN bug.

SPECIFICATIONS

Desktop ISDN TA with serial connection

Basic rate ISDN provides two 64Kbits/s channels

MultiLink PPP channel aggregation for 128Kbits/s transfer rate

Group 3 fax send/receive

Two rear sockets for standard analogue (RJ-11) connections

Flash ROM upgradable

Comms suite software supplied

£199 (inc VAT)

Pace: 0990 561001

www.pacecom.co.uk

Minimum requirements: Free serial port, ISDN service, ISDN-capable ISP.

Pace ISDN Professional

Ease of use ***

Performance ***

Features ***

Value for money ****

Overall ***

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