On Fri, Nov 03, 2000 at 01:54:58PM -0700, Tom Heibel wrote:
> Maurice,
>
> Thanks for the help. This is an issue we all need to overcome if we
> are going to use PCI modems in any Linux box because the motherboards
> being produced today have no ISA slots at all.
PCI modem is not the same thing as "winmodem" although you have a pretty
good chance that a random sample of the first will turn out to be the
later. Real modem cards, even PCI, happen to work on Linux for "always"
and likely this includes Alphas although I never tried. Flipping
power on a external modem always beats rebooting a machine because
a modem "hanged". Modems work in a pretty harsh environment, with
all line noise, pretty broad specs and unexpected "signals", so "hangs"
are not that infrequent. Not mentioning a buggy firmware with is
an everyday event.
Lightning hits on your phone lines, frying your external modem but
not a motherboard, are also something to think about.
In general, in my opinion, "winmodem" as a concept sucks badly for
various reasons. There are people which are trying to do something with
that stuff (a "smart" telecomunication card, for example, which is not
precisely a modem) and you can visit http://linmodems.org/ to see how
this goes. Usually not so great mostly due to a lack of technical specs
from manufacturers. There is no such thing as a "standard" for these
and implementations vary widely.
For x86 machines there is a binary-only module from Lucent which allows
some of these contraptions to work as modems. It is good only with some
kernel versions, pretends to work with some other but it is not
reliable, and is a constant source of much aggravation and horror
stories.
Michal
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