Re: Inexpensive modem

[Michal Jaegermann <michal ellpspace math ualberta ca>]

Malcolm Caldwell wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Mar 02, 2000 at 06:15:43PM -0500, Mike Foley wrote:
> > 
> > 	Any modem that's a "REAL" modem and not a 
> > 	Winmodem should work fine. PCI or ISA.
> 
> All my reading suggests that PCI modems don't work.
> 
> Eg the Modem HOWTO. http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO
> 
> ----
> 2.5.  PCI Modems
> 
>   A PCI modem card is one which inserts into a PCI-bus slot on the
>   motherboard of a PC.  Unfortunately, it seems that most PCI modems
                                                       ^^^^
>   will not work under Linux but efforts are underway to support some of
>   them.  See  ``PCI Bus Yet Supported''
> ----

At least some of your readings correctly say that __most__ PCI modems
don't work and this is a bit different from __all__.  Most PCI modems
are "winmodems" and even some of those which are not of that quasi-modem
kind do require an extra support (and current development kernels
have it - at least for those modems when somebody found some
documentation).  Still there exist PCI modems which work fine with
Linux right now.  See, for example, http://www.actiontec.com but there
are known working models of PCI modems from other companies.

There are also various CardBus modems, which are really "PCI modems for
laptops", which are known to work with Linux.  Often you just need
to set a proper IRQ and i/o port, listed in /proc/pci, as 'setserial
auto' will not find them by themselves.

Anyone considering a new modem should start from visiting
http://www.o2.net/~gromitkc/winmodem.html
to avoid time-consuming mistakes.  Among recent additions you will
find PCI 3CP5613 USR "Internet Gaming Modem" listed as working with
Linux.  This is not very surprising as trying to play games over
a "winmodem" can be an awfuly frustrating experience. :-)

   Michal