Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 23:41:27 -0800 From: Mike Thompson <miket@dnai.com> To: "John H. Baldwin" <jobaldwi@cslab.vt.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Internal PnP Modem and IRQ not in map... Message-ID: <199812290742.XAA11983@dnai.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981228221428.29672A-100000@labrador.cslab.vt .edu>
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At 10:19 PM 12/28/98 -0500, John H. Baldwin wrote: >Hi all, > >I'm having some problems getting an internal PnP modem to work with >2.2.8-Stable. The modem is a HSP K56Flex modem. I figured out its >vendor ID from pnpinfo(8) and added it to /usr/src/sys/i386/isa/sio.c so >that it recognized the modem and attached it to a sio device. John, I hate to tell you this, but using the HSP K56Flex modem with FreeBSD is a hopeless cause -- I spent an entire day last week tweaking with one only to discover that HSP stands for "Host Signal Processing". This means that the modem requires software running on the host Pentium processor to process the incoming analog modem signal -- real modems have an on-board Digital Signal Processor, ROM and RAM to handle this completely internal to the modem itself. HSP modems are literally just a minimal number of I/O components to connect the phone line to the computer. This is why they are significantly cheaper than a more traditional internal modem for the PC. They can also significantly degrade the performance of a low-end Pentium system too. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the manufactures of these modems only make drivers for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 and show no intentions of supporting any other OS's including FreeBSD or Linux. An inexpensive internal PnP 56K modem that does work OK with FreeBSD is a Best Data 56K Data Fax (Model #56SPS) modem -- roughly $60. In general you want to look for internal PC modems that claim to work with DOS, Windows 3.1 or a '486 processor. Be skeptical of any modem that claims to require Windows 95/98/NT and/or a 100/133 MHz Pentium processor. I hope this information helps. Mike Thompson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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