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In February, 1994 just before leaving on an 11-week tour of France, Germany, Austria, and Italy we had bought a notebook computer with a PC-card modem. During the entire trip we never figured out how to get on line. The next year, in April, 1995 we took the notebook with us to England. Our first stop was London. To get online there we had to find an adapter for the telephone connection to the modem and we had to have a phone number to call. Both problems were solved within 24 hours. We bought the adapter for the ridiculously high price of $10 for a simple piece of plastic. We found telephone numbers for AOL and Compuserve by calling information. Our second night we put it all together and it worked: we were online and got and sent email.

That was the high point of our 1995 online adventures. The next morning we followed the same process and failed to get online. Eventually we concluded that the PC-Card modem had been burned out. It took a while to reach that conclusion but once we had, we bought an external modem. After some more misadventures with female instead of male connectors and intermittment availability of AOL due to its then being an experimental service, we did get on line. It happened to be only a few days before we were to return to the USA, but so what. Nobody had sent us surface mail either.

We had these earlier experiences in mind when we were making preparations for this trip.We knew there were two essential things we wanted to do with computers on it: get online to send and receive email and get online to create and view our own web pages. We knew that AOL was all over Europe now. Our relatives in England and friends in France had accounts. From time to time we got email from Hong Kong, China, Australia, and other far places. And guide books even listed Internet Cafes. So getting online should be no problem if one had the correct equipment.

But what was the correct equipment? From the time in 1995 when our PC-Card was zapped until our departure we had never found anyone who could definitively tell us how to connect a notebook to a European telephone. We didn't seem to have any friend who travelled and carried a notebook and made a connection. Two or three times we sent emails to computer magazine advice columnists -- the answers were either "I don't know; I've never tried it." or "I'm sure it can be done." But nobody seemed to know definitively that voltages and signaling were the same; that the combination of hardware and software that worked in the USA would work in Europe.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, goes the saying. So just before we left we bought a new notebook. How things have changed. For 2/3 the price we got 96 MB in place of 12 MB main memory; 4.3 GB hard disk instead of 340 MB; a processor that is probably 32 times faster, and a color screen rather than a black and white screen. And the modem, while the same size and still called a PC-card now was capable of 56 kHz rather than 9.6 kHz. All we had to do was get to Europe, check the phone voltage, find whatever converted was needed, and make it work.

The standard American telephone cable has a male-plug on each end of about 1/4 inch by 3/8 inch (6 mm by 9 mm) which fits into a female socket of the same size. These are called RJ-11 plug/sockets. Our new notebook came with a black cable that had an RJ-11 plug on one end and a non-standard plug on the other end that connects to the PC-card modem. It also came with a double-ended female-female RJ-11 connector; this would allow, e.g. extending the cable or connecting to a converter. We need to find what that converter might be and buy it.

We arrived in France on June 22 and immediately started asking questions. We went into a half dozen small computer shops and asked what was needed. All assured us that voltage and signalling and software were the same as the USA; all we needed was the connection converter. Unfortunately none of them sold it. In Evreux we found a shop which did have the power cable with French standard plugs which we were also looking for; but it didn't sell the telephone converter.

The owner did however have an external modem with cables that he let us inspect. One of the cables was a standard male-male RJ-11 cable for hooking computer to modem. The other cable had a male RJ-11 on one end and a French standard plug on the other end for connecting the modem to telephone network. The French end is much more massive than an RJ-11; it is about 1.8 inch by 2.0 inch (42 mm x 50 mm). Seeing it supplied with a standard modem gave us great confidence that, as we had been told, voltages, etc were the same and we just needed the converter.

Since the owner didn't sell that cable we asked for a suggestion and got one: go to Carrefour outside of town. Carrefour is what the French call a hypermarché: a giant store that is the equivalent to a K-Mart or Target and a super supermarket. One of the earliest was built outside of Nancy just before we moved there in 1971/72. Now they are all over France. Americans who know little about Europe think that everybody still buys from the corner shop. The reality is that hypermarché parking lots are always full and that a very high percentage of retail sales are done by them.

We had been in Evreux to see the Cathedral. It was while doing our sight-seeing that we found the computer shop. We got lost on the way to the Carrefour, but did find it. And in the electrial section of the store we found just the cable needed: It's white, about 12 feet long (4 m) — long enough to reach from any phone socket to wherever we put the notebook — and has an RJ-11 on one end and a French plug on the other. After shopping we ate at the cafeteria next door and made the two hour drive back to our flat in Paris. It was so late that setting thing up and trying for a connection would have to wait until the next day.

We got up early, anxious to try it. Just plug here, plug there, and voilà, we'd be able to get our email. There must be thousands of interesting things for us to read. We made the physical connections, turned on computer, waited for it to boot, and then started AOL. And nothing! AOL reported there was no dial tone.

We didn't know what to do, so we tried a bit of everything. We tried the terminal program that comes with Windows. We called France Telecom. We asked new computer shops. Everybody told us it should work. And it didn't. The first morning and first day we spent a lot of time. Then the next day we just let it lie. Then the third day we tried again. No luck.

On the fourth or fifth day we had just about decided we'd never solve the problem. We started to seriously look into buying an external modem. Just start from scratch; get everything at once and know it goes together.

But Gerry decided to give our current stuff one last try. Inspection of the RJ-11 showed it had four wires. The French plug had six connectors. How did we know the right two of the four RJ-11 wires were connected to the right two of the French plug? We didn't. Maybe it was possible to check. Most plugs come with the wires heat-sealed inside. Believing that our purchase was the same way, Gerry picked it up and was very happy to discover that it was closed with screws. He opened it and inspected it. Careful and repeated inspection of the wires and their various colors led to the conclusion that they were not connected appropriately. This is a startling conclusion, since we would expect mass produced items to all be the same and all either work and all fail. The latter, all fail, seems so unlikely we assume they all will work.

Nonetheless the conclusion was that some wires were hooked up wrong. A simple calculation showed there to be three possible pairs and thus either three combinations if "direction" was unimportant or six if direction was important. All that was needed was to systematically try them — and hope that none of them would burn out the PC-Card.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to work we go. Combination one was set up. The computer was shut down, the cables hooked together, and the computer booted. AOL was fired up and told to go on line. As so many times before it reported no dial tone. Shut down the computer, unhook the cables, open up the plug and switch to combination two. Then hook the cables together, boot the computer, and fire up AOL. Try to get online. Dial tone detected!  Ting-ting-ting. Connection made.