Re: buying a 56K modem...

Carroll Grigsby wrote:

On Wednesday 20 December 2006 20:51, fredex wrote:

On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 12:41:40PM +0000, James Wilkinson wrote:

fredex wrote (about modems):

both external AND serial, NOT USB.

Um. The USB standards people seem to have provided standardised
interfaces for a lot of things, including external drives and modems.
Not all USB modems bother to implement the CDC ACM standard, but some
do. I understand that those that do implement this standard should work
under Fedora.

If you have the kernel-doc package installed, read
/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-2.6.18/Documentation/usb/acm.txt . It says
"Check for ACM compliance before buying."

Come to that, when I plugged my old (Motorola) mobile phone in, Fedora
automatically created a ttyAMC0 device node for it.

Having said all that, the last modem I used regularly was a 56K ISA
internal one which wasn't even plug'n'play. It was ideal for Linux. So I
can't recommend USB CDC ACM modems based on personal experience.

Hope this helps,

James.

James:

Thanks for the clarification.

The reaosn I suggested SERIAL and not USB is because I know that some
USB modems work, some don't, and I personally have/had no idea how
to tell without first buying it. So, to avoid giving the OP a bum
steer I suggested what should be foolproof (assuming you can find a
serial modem in the stores these days).

Fred

Fred:

The big office supply chains (Staples, Office Depot and similar) still sell honext-to-goodness real 56K serial modems -- usually Zoom. I suspect that they are sold to low traffic SOHO market for FAX and answering machine service. Back in my DOS days, I used a PCTools program that served as a phone directory, dialer and call logger. Very convenient. Hmmm...

-- cmg