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I stopped using discrete modems and went for winmodems (softmodems) almost immediately because of the latency getting the data through the serial port. Sadly, it is the same for graphics cards which is why you will never catch me dead with one in my machine. I will pown (sic) you all everyday of the week.

I'm not sure what it would even mean for the hardware to be designed for only one OS. Can you give an example of how a Winmodem is designed only for Windows? In any case, seeing that Winmodems work fine in Linux, a non-Windows OS, whether they're "designed for Windows" or not is irrelevant.

I was under the impression that a number of winmodems were supported. Did you actually check if it was supported or not, if you didn't maybe you would like to check here

Shame then that Linux on the desktop is still effectively a hardware support crapshoot.

Actually it supports ancient hardware like that quite well, because people have had plenty of time to reverse engineer the hardware and debug device drivers. Even old winmodems are doing quite well.

Rich.

Also, for anyone wondering "why Western Ontario?", UWO is home to a very well respected wintunnel lab, which has tested many very well known buildings...

Unfortunately, the "wintunnel" doesn't include hardware support for the buildings, and depends on Windows to supply such things as nails and sheetrocks.

(obligatory WTF? link.)

And no I can't switch to Linux untill I get a new modem since mines a Winmodem.

Linux supports many winmodems. You can see if yours is supported here.

many of those have no functionality under Linux (or any other non-Windows OS) whatsoever.

Oh, but they do!
Just not quite the functionality the manufacturers intended :)

WinModem drivers simply do not exist or function correctly for most WinModems.

http://linmodems.org/ anyone?

Seriously, I've dealt with about 4 WinModems in the past, all working perfectly on Linux. I admit, you have to know what you're doing if you are to use WinModems on Linux... But you have to know what you're doing if you're using Linux, period.

http://www.linmodems.org/

Probably a silly question, but you have checked http://www.linmodems.org/ haven't you?

The main site is full of information to help identify and get working "windows" modems under Linux. The list still seems to be active. Before ADSL arrived in my corner of the world I was dependant on them to get connected via inbuilt modems. I can't fault the helpfulness of the people on the list.

It doesn't matter if the modem cards you're getting are unpredictable provided that you know that it's one of a small subset and you know how to get each one (or most of them) to work. When I was last looking at this (over a year ago - but I guess that the kit you're seeing isn't new) the most manufacturer that modems identified themselves as was Agere/Lucent, for which there are various drivers around.

Some modems will probably just never get Linux drivers - the 3com 3c556 and relatives are examples of that. See:
http://zurich.ai.mit.edu/pipermail/omnibook/2002-A pril/001275.html

What's a Linmodem?

Click here to ruin the joke.

ps. I've also got the modem working... say if you want the notes on how to do this.

I seem to remember sopme discussion of using a software modem under Linux to obtain higher transfer speeds than the current standards would allow over a standard telephone connection. Of course this would require that both ends of the connection would be talking the same language (compatible "standards", etc), and this would run afoul of FCC regulations in the United States, but that's only a small part of the world, and this could be usefull in situations where a standard telephone wire is available, but no other conectivity is available at a reasonable price (or at all).

Does anyone else remember this?

Can anyone provide a link or two?

I'd hate to reinvent the wheel on this one, or waste enourmous effort without being familiar with the work of those who have gone before. I've found nothing about this on the Linmodem website, and google has been not much help either.

thanks.

Get a winmodem and software from Linmodems.org

Citing the site:

# Think telephone emulation (put the audio card into full duplex, and talk to the linmodem with it).
# Think telephone with a backspace key (use the linmodem to dial for you).
# Think smart telephone: "That line is busy. Do you want me to retry in five minutes?"
# Think "voice dialling".
# Think "soft pbx". Equip enough machines in an office for all the outside lines. Then do IP telephone inter-office, and go to a linmodem when you need an outside line.
# Think answering machine.
# Think pager interface. Your answering machine takes the call, phones your pager company and pages you).
# Think "contact database with integral dialler, and answering machine recognition".
# Think "call recording with no off-hook click".
# Think message detail recorder (basically a record of all time spent on the phone. Great for billing.


I guess mailing voice recording wouldn't be hard.

When I worked for an ISP [4+ years ago], we saw two major types of winmodems.

The Lucent ones, which lacked flash, relied upon the system for its initial setup information. The Rockwell ones, relied on the system for just about everything, and would drive the load up on your system.

Of course, there were some growing pains with the Lucent ones, but after a few revisions, the Lucent LTWinmodems didn't suck... At least for windows users. And there are some Linux drives out there for them. The Rockwell HCF, however, were always crap in the time I was dealing with them, and I doubt they've gotten much better.

But most people out there can't justify the expense of a Courier, or even a Sportster these days.

Modemsite (formerly "v.90 = v.Unreliable"), has small modems based on the Lucent chipset for $20 each. I have no experience with purchasing from the guy, but his website was a godsend in the days of that whole 'x2/kFlex/kFlex/v.90' nightmare.

He also links to LinModems which may have some useful info.

http://www.linmodems.org/

It's not 100% guaranteed every time but it takes care of the most of them...

If you dont need bells a whistles a 56k modem for more than 50+ bucks seems a bit pricey. There are plenty of linux "compatible" modems for less than 30 bucks.

Yes.

I'd far rather an operating system that allowed me to use my modem and access the internet than split hairs over the definition of a modem and, ultimately, not.

Linux has WinModem support. It's just not built into the kernel as standard.

A win"modem" isn't a modem.

Read the section on "Rationale" on the linmodems site.

Don't know but you can always DIY http://www.linmodems.org Regards

For example: no Linux support for my printer. I don't have my scanner working yet.

Printers
Scanners

CD burning: well, OK, when I've worked out how to do it in 2.2.18.

Kernel 2.2.18 is positively ancient and you need to upgrade it if you want any "new" devices to work. USB support in particular is much better in kernel 2.4 than it was in 2.2. If you want to get your CD-RW working, Search comp.os.linux.hardware for keywords "CD-RW howto" since questions involving CD-RWs get asked and answered there all the time.

Wireless hub setup via USB? Nope. USB ADSL modem? Nope.

See above comment about better USB support with new kernels. USB networking is a Goddess-awful kludge, but some devices do work... you know how to use Google, right?

Winmodems? Nope.

The linmodems page has a lot of information on which ones work (many Lucent models, some Conexant, some others) and links/HOWTOs for getting them working.

Digital camera? Who knows...

The people on comp.os.linux.hardware? Most USB digital cameras appear as USB Mass Storage devices, plug in, "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera", copy all the pictures to your hard disk. USB Mass Storage support is much better in kernel 2.4 than is was in 2.2, so upgrade!

Not all can be made to work but a significant portion can. If the manufacturers would release some specs they would all be supported. This URLhas details.

...there are many hardware accelerated winmodems aroud and they are heavily used in pcs (mainly laptops) and there are actually drivers for linux for most of them around. however, they are all semi-proprietary (meaning that at least some part of them is not open source) since writing a codec (using a dsp or not) for a 56k modem is a tough problem. there was a lot of discussion about it on the linmodem mailing list and the conlusion was that it's non trivial.

i'd be happy if this problem could be solved for the dreamcast but i have some serious doubts since it's been around with popular pcs for some time now and noone has solved it yet.

Now, why you'd want a WinModem in the first place is beyond me. If I have a modem, it is going to be external so I can see the blinking lights and hit the power switch if necessary.

While this was widely hailed in the Open Source community as a victory over the "Microsoft tax," which usually afflicts buyers of Linux PCs, one major question remained unanswered: How well do these machines support Linux? Some PCs produced today are crammed with "value-added" (otherwise known as "brain dead") hardware that only works with specific drivers -- drivers that are frequently available under Windows alone.

So, in order to get the straight scoop, we went off to the Wal-Mart Web site to purchase a system and load Linux on it.

Choices, choices

As previously mentioned, the Wal-Mart site currently lists 14 machines without an operating system. All are listed under the Microtel brand, and include a selection of Celeron, Duron, Athlon, and Pentium 4 processors ranging from 1 to 2 GHz. The prices range from a consumer-friendly U.S. $398 for a 1 GHz Duron or Celeron box, to a top-end 2 GHz Pentium 4 at U.S. $868. The low end offerings start with a "mere" 128 MB of memory, while the upper end tops out at hefty 512 MB installed. And to think that I still have a few 256 KB (yes, that's one quarter of a megabyte) SIMMs sitting in my drawer. The low end is a heck of a lot nicer than it was just a few years ago.

For the purposes of this review, we ordered a 1 GHz Duron system for U.S. $398. We figured that this would be a relatively popular selection among the more cost-conscious Linux users. With shipping, the total was a manageable U.S. $413. We ordered the PC on the evening of April 11 and it came to my door on April 22.

First look

The order arrived in a single, well-designed shipping box. In addition to the standard mini tower, the system includes a keyboard, a two-button mouse with scroll wheel, a pair of inexpensive speakers, and all the usual cables. The mini tower reminds me of any number of PC clone towers I have seen recently, but people buying these units are interested in functionality, not geek chic. The system also included the manufacturer's booklets for the motherboard and CDROM drive, as well as CDs with Windows drivers.

Inside the unit, there is a 40 GB Samsung drive, 128 MB of memory (8 MB of which is shared as video), and 52x LG CDROM Drive. The motherboard is a Microstar MicroATX motherboard model MS-6378. It has 2 DIMM slots (1 used), 3 PCI slots (one of which is occupied by a modem card), and 1 unused CNR slot. Sound and ethernet are handled on the motherboard, which also sports an Award BIOS dated 2/25/2002.

For those so inclined, the motherboard manual does say that the board supports overclocking, but it also provides the usual warnings about the risks of overclocking. So, it appears that speed freaks may be able to tweak the clock speed at their own risk.

Setting up the system was the same as setting up any standard clone. Plug in the keyboard, mouse, speakers, and power cord. The only essential item that is missing is a monitor (you will probably want to add a mouse pad and a surge suppressor, but those are optional).

Running under DemoLinux V3

For a quick check of the system, I put a DemoLinux version 3 CD in the CDROM drive and booted the system up. I found that the video came up fine using the framebuffer driver. Sound, likewise, was detected without incident. The only two items that did not function on boot-up were the modem and the ethernet. The ethernet was brought to life easily by loading the tulip driver and configuring the network interface. The modem, however, was another matter. I decided to wait to until I actually installed Linux to tackle that problem.

Installing Mandrake 8.1

Figuring that it was time to get serious, I began installing Mandrake version 8.1 on the system. I selected the most automated form of installation (as a Linux newbie might) to see how the process would fare. I was pleased with the results.

The installation went without incident. The Mandrake installer detected and configured the video, sound, and network without pain. At no time was there any indication that the installer was fighting strange hardware. I was thrilled.

But there was one fly in the ointment: the modem. The modem clearly was not a true hardware modem. So, using the "lspci -vv" command from an xterm (you can get the same result by looking at the PCI Information from the KDE Control Center), I tried to identify the type of modem in the machine. It was identified as an unidentified "Lucent Microelectronics" device. Thankfully, this meant that there might be a working Linux driver for this modem.

I traveled to linmodems.org and found the link to Randal Oliveira's site for Lucent drivers. Note that the Lucent drivers require kernel modules that must be recompiled for each version of the kernel, so it is essential that you either find a module that is compiled against the appropriate kernel, or else you will need to compile it yourself. After a couple of minutes, I located an RPM that someone had created for the Lucent drivers under Mandrake 8.1. After downloading and installing the RPM, I decided to reboot to see if the device would now be found on startup. Much to my delight, it was!

Unfortunately, my delight did not last. When I actually tried to use the modem, I found that the AT commands all worked as expected, but I could not get the modem to go off hook, recognize the dial tone, or generate touch tones. I spent hours on this with no joy.

Running under SuSE v7.2 Live Eval

Next, I wanted to see how SuSE Linux would handle the machine. I didn't have a full SuSE kit on hand, but I did have a V7.2 Live Evaluation CD handy. Like DemoLinux, this allows you to run SuSE Linux from the CD with no actual installation. I found that the SuSE Live Eval system detected everything fine, except for the modem. Not a bad result from a non-installed system.

Installing Red Hat v7.1

I then tried to install Red Hat V7.1 and found results close to my Mandrake experience. Everything loaded fine, except for the sound card and modem. The sound card was quickly activated by choosing the automatic configuration option from the sound configuration utility. I then downloaded a copy of the Lucent modem driver for Red Hat V7.1 and promptly found that the modem was behaving exactly as it did under Mandrake. The AT commands all seemed to work until you attempted to dial. The phone line never went off-hook and touch tones were never generated.

After several hours of investigation on the Web and experimentation, I could not find an answer. I tried different IRQs, changed settings in the CMOS, checked the phone line ... nothing.

So, in my desperation, I decided to confirm that the darn modem actually worked. I pulled an unused Windows ME distribution off the shelf, installed it, and loaded the modem driver. To my surprise, the modem dialed the phone. I checked the settings under Windows and found they were identical to the default settings detected under Linux.

I reloaded Red Hat and played some more. No change. I could get replies to the AT commands, but I could not get it to do anything remotely productive with the telephone line. There may be a solution to this, but it certainly isn't obvious.

Conclusion

The Wal-Mart machine itself strikes me as a very reasonable clone. With the exception of the modem, all the hardware seems to work. I have had to live with useless modems in clones before, but at least this modem is a card that can be removed from the machine. I should also note that Mandrake installed on the box easier than Windows ME did. If I had wanted to keep Windows on the machine, I would have had to manually install drivers for both the ethernet and sound card, because Windows did neither on installation.

So it appears that the Wal-Mart machine as tested makes a very reasonable Linux box. But I suggest you lose the Lucent modem card and replace it with a real hardware modem.

Linux does have support for some winmodems. Check out linmodems.org. However, I don't think winmodems are a good thing for internet access/gaming. They are just cheap soundcards that have a telephone jack as a connector--real modems use a chip to process the signals. Having your CPU do the signal processing slows down your computer. It's better to buy a real modem and save money on a slower processor--or have a fast processor that isn't bogged down with unneeded crap...

However the winmodems may be useful with some of the alternative suggestions on the linmodem page. A voice mail server could be quite nice...

it looks like all Harman-Kardon receivers can decode MP3 streams, but if you don't have one of those, i think this lovely device might fit your desire. it takes the MP3 stream from your USB port and converts it to digital audio (PCM). One problem, though, is that it sounds like it needs windows drivers to work. then again, they said winmodems would never work outside of windows...and look what happened.

--Siva

Developers must be persuaded to provide Linux drivers, especially for "Winmodems,"

Actually, I hear there is already some good support for Winmodems, especially those with the Lucent chipset. There's even some vendor support for other chipsets.

Does anyone know if any of the distributions include Winmodem support yet?

Sitting around sifting all these details through my head, it occured to me that all this AOL/Redhat talk might end up being super cool for the linmodem folks.

To spell it out, an AOL/Redhat OS will obviously need to work with the innumerable makes and models of modems lying about on joe-ueser's box. Of course this will mean a pretty wide base of drivers. Last time I checked the linmodem folks were making a good start with some drivers, but still pretty far from complete support for the umpteen million software modem brands.

Pure (another step-along) speculation for now, but I guess we shall see.

Actually, most winmodems are supported now: Linmodems

I was curious about his @pilosoft.com address, but the site is blank. However, a google search on his name revealed a personal homepage.

One thing worth noting: he's 22 years old.. hmmm. According to his resume, he has contributed to apache, mod_perl, postgresql and freebsd.

My personal guess is that he has convinced one of his employers to pay for this (Lazard Ferez & Co., which he works for, seem potential, but i don't know enough about them). I'll be following the bounty thread.

Anyway, I think he is for rea and wish him good luck. Here's a picture of our hero

Still, that doesn't help much with a laptop does it? I wish I could use my 3COM X-jack modem with my linux laptops, but sadly I have found no info on drivers for it. Doubtful they are in the works either.

I paid about $5 more for some 128MB chips yesterday. Oh, and another little bit for tax. Because I know the vendor, and they don't give me grief on returns. I also get to look at the product prior to purchase. (Was looking for a PCI modem with a controller on it. IOW, not a WinModem. Anybody know of an internal PCI controller based modem?)

Buy a Lucent (LT) winmodem. Seriously! There are drivers out for Linux. I got one when my Dell laptop (Inspiron 4000) happened to have one built in. In my short testing of it I found that it works exceedingly well with high connect speeds and excellent compression. I too hated winmodems at one point but they can be an excellent solution if your processor is of a recent vintage.

If you definately don't want a winmodem take a look Winmodems are not modems; Linux information page.

SuSE is a good first distribution because it lets you work at whatever your level is. It has setup tools named YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) and YaST2 for general system work (adding a printer, etc.) and SaX (SuSE advanced XConfigurator) or SaX2 for setting up X (the base on which you run a GUI). As you learn more about Linux, you can rely less on the setup tools and begin to do stuff by hand, but the setup tools will still be there to use for the harder stuff and (here's what makes it different) the tools will continue to work despite (almost) any changes you have made without using the tools. This way if you feel like experimenting with something and the experiment goes wrong, you can use the tools to bail you out.

Another advantage of SuSE is that YaST/YaST2 work without X, which means that if something goes wrong and keeps you from running X you can still use the tools in case you need them to fix the problem. Since you've got an older computer, you will probably be glad the config tools don't use X just because of the increased speed.

Whatever you choose, have fun. Linux is Linux no matter what distro you use.

A couple sites that might be helpful with any distro: The Linux hardware compatibility database (http://lhd.datapower.com) and linmodems.org (http://www.linmodems.org). Often first-time Linux users will have winmodems, and win-just-about-every-thing-else. These sites can help get win-crap^h^h^h^hhardware working under Linux.

Hemos,

The IBM ThinkPad T20 has the very popular Lucent Winmodem in it. My Acer Extensa 501T has one as well.

Download This File from Linmodems.Org. Sure, it's binary only, but it works. Set up the modem with isapnp, unzip the file above, read the readme, and run the installer.

You can add this to conf.modules:

alias char-major-62 ltmodem
install ltmodem insmod "-f" "-k" "ltmodem"

I'm pretty sure this will work for you. Enjoy.

Hemos,

The IBM ThinkPad T20 has the very popular Lucent Winmodem in it. My Acer Extensa 501T has one as well.

Download This File from Linmodems.Org. Sure, it's binary only, but it works. Set up the modem with isapnp, unzip the file above, read the readme, and run the installer.

You can add this to conf.modules:

alias char-major-62 ltmodem
install ltmodem insmod "-f" "-k" "ltmodem"

I'm pretty sure this will work for you. Enjoy.

I chose to get Windows ME instead of Dell's configuration of Linux, for two main reasons.

1) Configuration of linux is important, and not something that I'd give responsibility for to somebody else. Especially with laptops, there are dozens of little things that you'd like to configure yourself to get the machine to be 'just so'. Having somebody else do it the first time forces you to start from a somewhat unknown position. Better a completely blank machine than somebody else's configuration.

2) Windows ME is a good place to check out drivers and hardware. You can plug in your USB CompactFlash card reader, and see if the hardware is compatible (under Windows) before trying to dig up a driver (under Linux). I probably boot Windows at least once a month to do this; most recently when I was trying to get the Lucent winmodem working. (It does work, see http://www.linmodems.org )

I wouldn't be at all surprised if 95% of the Dell laptops running Linux were bought with Windows (it's no more expensive) for exactly these reasons.

thad

Forgive me, but I tend to disagree with this quite heavily. While I wouldn't say it's the best, the Dell Inspiron 8000 blows this out of the water for compatability. I'm partial to Mandrake 8.0, but any distribution is supported on this machine, and the ATI M4 Mobility or nVidia GeForce GO video, ESS Maestro3 sound, and Intel EEPro100 onboard ethernet are all supported out of the box. Hell, even the Lucent Winmodem is one of the supported models on www.linmodems.org and works great. Dell's support is great, their options are extremely configurable, and I've been enjoy watching my DVDs with Xine on trips for a while now. I'd recommend this laptop to anyone for Linux use, and would definitely pick it well ahead of an iBook.

Lucent don't exactly support it, but it appears that there's at least one person at Lucent who supports the Linux community. They produced a Linux driver (infrastructure source, binary dsp module), and it's been tweaked (debugged) by some folks out on the net.

For general Linux "winmodem" information, check out the linmodems website. This site links to the updated Lucent drivers. I'm using them successfully on my T20.

Tim

Drivers for other winmodems can be found at linmodems.org.
Personally though, since I got the DSL hooked up I'm never going back to dialup...

http://www.linmodems.org/

And the name winmodem does rather give the game away - as I understand them, much of what is done in hardware in a conventional modem is done in (OS) software in a winmodem. The trick, of course, is to turn the winmodem into a linmodem. Or, err, buy a concentional modem.

The ltmodem module worked fine for me up to 2.2.14 & looks like being fixed in 2.2.18 from AC's comments on latest 2.2.18pre, but was broken with .15 - .17...
This post in the archives of linmodems.org has the details (of the prob).
As for Mandrake not supporting the drivers, I recall one of the developers asking for details, or access to a box with one, on Mandrakeforum (I informed him that it would only work with a really dirty hack @ the time).
--
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc

Go there : http://www.linmodems.org/

____________________

Remember, some laptops have integrated Winmodems. Just saying "Get a Real Modem" usually isn't sufficient.
I'm lucky, though, as my laptop has a Lucent winmodem which has a driver (so to speak). Go see www.linmodems.org for more info.

The "Linmdoem" pages here should provide more than enough info on the subject.

google is always your friend. :)

There is a Lucent Winmodem ( Imean Linmodem) driver. Check out www.linmodems.org
The link to the driver is www.linmodems.org/linux.568.zip

There is a Lucent Winmodem ( Imean Linmodem) driver. Check out www.linmodems.org
The link to the driver is www.linmodems.org/linux.568.zip

I don't miss any vital application that doesn't under Linux already.

But most users at my location won't switch their home machines to GNU/Linux until it can run one or more of these apps:

• Netscape Communicator, connecting to the Internet through software modems (analog or DSL)
• Unreal Tournament
• EverQuest
• Freespace 2
• Ultima Online
• Diablo II (when it's released)
• Hlf-Life
• AutoCAD (we have a site license with permission to take it home)
• Microsoft Visual C++ (or another compiler that can make MotherFuckingCrap apps)

Yes, however they haven't released it to the general public -- only to their customers. And their customers are the people who put PC/Tel chips on boards. So if you want the PC/Tel linmodem, you have to ask the people who sold you the board.
-russ

Regarding the "All PCI modems are WinModems" comment above...

Go read through the list of known modems on LinModems and find the line that says there are 3 PCI hardware modems in existence that work with Linux. I don't know them off the top of my head, but I know they are named in there.