What is the difference between hard and soft modem?

Answer 1

There are two basic parts to a modem: the datapump and the controller. The datapump regulates the transforming of digital signals into analog and analog into digital. The controller tells the modem how to behave/connect and how to interpret initialization strings. A hardware modem has hardware chips do both of these functions, while a software modem has software on the computer perform the same tasks. Software modems are sometimes called WinModems. Basically there are two types of software modems. They are Controllerless and HSP modems. Controllerless modems have software do the part of the controller, but the datapump is still hardware. HSP modems are completely software driven except for the most basic functionality. In an HSP modem, both the controller and the datapump are in software. Winmodems have a different set of problems than hardware modems because they depend heavily on resources and memory on the computer. A slow computer or one that is always running high-end programs will not have enough resources to give to a software modem, and this could cause disconnections or a host of other problems. Also, just like normal Windows programs, the software on these modems can crash, meaning that you'll have to restart your computer to get the modem to respond again.