[ale] Share my frustration: what do you do for fax/data modems?

[James P. Kinney III]

On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 16:02 -0400, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> Okay....
> 
> I guess I need to explain some things here.  Remember that I deal with
> modems daily.  In fact a few today.
> 
> 1.  If it is too good to be true then it is not true.
> 2.  Hardware modems cost more than $10
> 3.  Repeat #2 10 times remembering #1.
> 
> Call Ginstar and tell them you need a hardware modem.  They don't keep
> many around but they will sell you one.  I pay around $35-$50 ea.  
> I've never had problems getting hardware modems to work in Linux.

I have been looking for a reliable source for internal modems with voice
support. I'll give Ginstar a try. I found one on-line several years ago
(~$45 and it claims to be a USRobotics) but I can't relocate the source.
Voice modems are great for making nice answering machine with VOCP.
> 
> Multi-Tech sells a USB external powered by USB.  No wall wart.  $125.
> Works great in 2.6 not so in 2.4.  Uses acm driver.  Driver has minimal
> tty support in 2.4 does not even support character processing.  So stty
> says one thing the truth is another.  I had to modify the driver to get
> it to support CRNL type features.  I hacked it in an get an occasional
> panic.
> 
> The USB modem is the size of a standard ZDX.  They have one that is even
> smaller about the size of a USB ethernet dongle.  Very nice!
> 
> Since I live in a world of serial I respect UARTs. In the good ole days
> UARTs were kings.  A true modem needs _no_ driver.  Any modem that
> requires one is not a true modem.  Just a DSP masking as one and will
> give you problems.  Reliable communications requires reliable hardware
> and to me that means a hardware modem is the only answer.
> 
> 
> On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 15:50 -0400, Vernard Martin wrote:
> > Just like Byron, I am doing modem stuff at the moment.
> > 
> > The situation: I have a Dell Itanium machine running RedHat Enterprise 
> > Linux. It has no USB ports. I have a USB-to-Serial adapater plugged in 
> > and its working fine. I'm using an external  USRobotics modem to do SMS 
> > messages with the Nagios monitoring system.
> > 
> > Since the machine is a rackmount, I'd like to eliminate the external 
> > modem and its power supply brick and replace it with an internal modem.  
> > But the problem of course if finding an internal PCI modem that is 
> > supported under linux as well. I don't mind spending money on this as 
> > its a enterprise critical system.
> > 
> > My current attempts at finding a solution was to purchase a $10 modem at 
> > Frys that claimed it had linux support. Unfortunately its mostly linux 
> > 2.4 kernel support. The 2.6 support doesn't complain cleanly and I'm 
> > trying to muddle through that.
> > 
> > Where can I buy a modem that will definitely work with linux?
> > 
> > Vernard
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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