Stone age laptop modem dialing without dial tone

Sorry to be so wordy in the title, but I thought it best to be specific.

Issue: antique NEC Versa (W95) with a US Robotics 33.6 "card" modem. I downloaded the driver package from OEM site and installed with no apparent issues. I click to connect to a local ISP and it dials but there is no dial tone present. Obviously it won't connect, but why will it even attempt to dial if there is no dial tone? Line checks good with a telephone. Somewhere in the properties, can't remember where, there was a check box that said "wait for dial tone before dialing" which of course I checked.

Does this sound like a brain dead modem or something I messed up in the installation? I notice this modem's jack has 4 wires where the modem in my Thinkpad only has 2. Probably has nothing to do with it, just thought I'd point it out.

I notice on my Dell (XP) and Thinkpad (98) I can run msconfig or configsys and one of the services is "telephony", and if it's unchecked, there will be no internet connection. I tried "run" and "configsys" and msconfig" but it came back with an error message that neither was found. Does 95 have a different name for it's set/startup program?

This laptop is worth about four dollars, but it'd be cool to make it functional just the same. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

 

just to let you know thats ok. your phone only uses 2 wires the other 2 are for if you get a 2nd line put in