Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 13:03:12 +0200 From: Ladavac Marino <mladavac@metropolitan.at> To: "'questions@freebsd.org'" <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Modems Message-ID: <55586E7391ACD211B9730000C11002761796CF@r-lmh-wi-100.corpnet.at>
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Hello all, since there were several questions lately about support for various modems, I would like to craify the situation a bit. Modem is something that has an UART on one end and an analog telephone line on the other. Everything else is a Winmodem, and is not supported. Let's qualify the UART part a bit more: it is a piece of hardware which converts bytes into streams of bits, and takes care about bitstream synchronization. Most modern motherboards come with at least two of them--one knows them as RS-232 ports. FreeBSD supports most available UARTs. Most, if not all, external modems connect to the RS-232 ports and use the UARTs on the motherboard, or a supported multiport serial card. Some internal modems come with UARTs on board. If those UARTs (implemented purely in hardware or not is irrelevant as long as they behave as normal UARTs) both the BIOS and FreeBSD will detect them as UARTs, and modem will be capable of functioning (modullo modem command set, but this is almost invariably Hayes-compatible nowadays). If your "modem" is not detected as serial port, it is a Winmodem and will require a special OS driver to use it. Sadly, most winmodem manufacturers do not supply the programming data--ergo, winmodems are not, and most likely never will be supported. So, to sum this up: if your modem is visible to the system as (or through) a serial port, it is supported. If it isn't, it is not. Hope this helps, /Marino -- Marino Ladavac, Dipl.-Ing. Metropolitan Datenserviceges.m.b.H e-mail: mladavac@metropolitan.at GSM: +43 676 309 79 67 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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