Why can't set modem to com 3 or 4?

[scourge]

I have a Gateway Telepath II 14.4 (a.k.a. USR 14.4) modem. It has on-board jumpers for coms 1 - 4 and various IRQ settings. I have tried to get it to work as com 3 or 4, but have had no success. The only way it works is if I disable com 2 in my bios and set it for com 2. Why is this? I would really rather not disable com 2 in my bios if I didn't have to. I'm not using it right now, but I may want to in the future. I have an FIC 503+ mobo. Com 1 is being used for my mouse and a printer is being used for the parallel. Com 2 is unused/disabled except for the modem. Am I doing something wrong or is this the way it has to be?

[MadMax]

I have had similar probs with other hardware combos. My probs involved resource conflicts with onboard serial ports and the modem.

Port i/o int
com1 3f8 4
com2 2f8 3
com3 3e8 4
com4 2e8 3

While the com ports(1,3 and 2,4) should be able to share the irqs, many older mobos/modems have trouble with this. Especially non-pnp modems. The only solution I've been able to use was what you have done already, disable an o/b serial port to free up the static resource(usually the irq). You might consider a ps/2 mouse as the 503+ has ps/2 support. Sorry I couldn't help you more.