Thanks to everyone for the help.  I ended up going back out to HP's
website and found a document for the default BIOS settings and believe
it or not, it has COM1 IRQ4 and COM3 IRQ4 setup as defaults.  Looks
crazy to me seeing how those 2 IRQ's conflict, but that's the way it was
setup.  I restored it to default, setup modem on COM2 IRQ3 and had
Windows detect COM2 and find the modem.  It is working fine ( still will
not install the Zoltrix Wave Device for sound, but I can live with that
).

I tried to find where to disable COM2 onboard but unfortunately I dont
have the manual ( it is in TN with my in-laws ).  I appreciate all the
help.

Thanks again...
Robert



Bob Chapel wrote:
>
> Robert,
>
> I have been stuck like this before and had some success with AMI bios at
> least in choosing the legacy option in the bios setup for irq's 3 and 4
> This effectively disables (I believe..others correct me if I am
> wrong)plug and play for these IRQ's and allows you to force a device into
> an assigned IRQ...if your bios allows this choice you might want to try
> this...
>
> I have also disabled all the com ports on occassion and pulled out
> anything that uses one except the modem....just recently I had to do this
> with a KDS (Amquest)56K and I finally got it installed on com #1..I'm not
> too happy about this but the machine uses a mouse port so I still have a
> comm port free.
>
> Hope this helps a little,
>
> Bob Chapel