Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:27:15 -0500 From: giesen@comm.mot.com (Bob Giesen) To: kline@tera.com (Gary Kline) Cc: giesen@inil.com (giesen), freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, giesen@comm.mot.com Subject: Re: Plug-n-play modem woes Message-ID: <991011162715.ZM16813@prelude13> In-Reply-To: kline@tera.com (Gary Kline) "Re: Plug-n-play modem woes" (Oct 10, 8:45pm) References: <199910110345.UAA12284@tera.com>
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On Oct 10, 8:45pm, Gary Kline wrote: > Subject: Re: Plug-n-play modem woes > According to giesen: > > Here's hoping someone can help... I've looked here for others with > > the same problem and checked out the FAQ's and "The Complete FreeBSD," > > but I seem to be at an impasse. > > I have an internal, plug-n-play Zoom V.34 33.6 Speakerphone faxmodem > > that I can't seem to get to a usable sio_. I have Win98 on one drive > > (0) and BSD on the other (the accomplishment of which is a story in its > > own right) and I wish to keep the system that way, indefinitely. The > > modem isn't a Winmodem, as far as I can tell; it worked fine under > > Debian Linux. (I was a bit disappointed that Netscape hiccups caused > > Linux to crash a few times and decided to give FreeBSD a try.) > > The short answer is Throw out the Zoom and buy a 3Com/USR > *external* for around $200 US (there are usually 10% discount > coupons). > > I mis-invested several weekends before realizing that my > Zoom was defective--it was not a Winmodem, but simply > broken, and by the time I had proven it was the modem, it > was too late to get a refund. > > Check out the modem HowTo in a recent ``AnswerMan'' column > www.daemonnews.org. Dirk Myers, David Leonard, and I cover > all the basics. > > gary > >-- End of excerpt from Gary Kline Thanks for the info. The AnswerMan article that I found only picks up after a successful modem installation; is that the one (from August) that you referred to? As for the external modem, I've already kicked myself many a time for not having picked one of those up instead of the card. (Heck, even Windows 95 didn't want to recognize it at first. The old-fashioned configuration method (DIP switches) was a lot simpler to manage than "Plug and Play." Given all the horror stories I've heard and read (not to mention, "experienced") about pnp's failures, what a horrendous specification pnp must be... The specification should have mandated configuration via BIOS upon booting (with configs stored in EEPROMS, static RAM, or whatever...), with alterations by software (including OS's) allowed (via BIOS interrupts, of course), but unnecessary. This would have ensured seamless integration of pnp hardware into any OS -- including the ones from Redmond. ;-) ) Anyway, an external modem isn't in the budget right now (not even the ones I've seen advo'd for around $80), so I'd really like to try to get this internal Zoom ComStar working. I looked at Zoom's web site and saw some info there that may indicate it won't work, but I'm not sure. (They mentioned a ComStar, but the article was much older than my modem.) I sent them a rundown of my problem and a request for some guidance (if only to tell me I'm s.o.l.) and am awaiting their reply. One thing I did ask them -- and I'd like to ask anyone who has some knowledge -- is, since FreeBSD is consistently finding the modem as sio4 upon booting, might an alteration to my kernel configuration be able to pick it up and let me access it at cuaa4? I was thinking along the lines of putting a line like, "device sio4 at isa? port ____ tty flags 0x____" in my config file, rebuilding the kernel, doing a MAKEDEV cuaa4....... Might something like that work? Thanks again, Bob ------- "Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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