modem difficulties

[Ryan Jameson <ratguy proaxis com>]

I had very little problems with my modem using RH 5.2, but recently I 
upgraded to 6.2. For some reason I keep losing the ability to access my modem.

During the first startup eth0 fails, which isn't surprising in that I'm not 
connected to a network via the ethernet card I've got in my computer. So, I 
removed that using netcfg or linuxconf. I set up my modem with modemtool 
and set up the ppp using KDE's ppp dialer. It works fine for the first few 
tries, but then after a few reboots it loses the ability to access the 
modem. The same thing happens to minicom. Minicom totally hangs my system 
actually, but didn't do so at first. Has anyone else had this problem? Does 
the 'use lock file' option in the ppp setup have anything to do with this?

Thanks
Ryan