A well written post from Civileme. Might I also add that [even] under
Windows, A windmoden is still enough to turn a 400 Mhz P II with 128 Mb
or RAM into a rather sluggish machine. They really are *incredibly* poor
devices.
Mike
------------------------------------------
Mike MacCana Support Consultant
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On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, civileme wrote:
> On Friday 26 January 2001 20:44, you wrote:
> > so many peoples have problems with winmodem in linux
> > i wonder why they dont dont make drivers for them ?
> > is it that hard ?
>
> It is when no information is available.
>
> It is when no developers are interested in supporting people who replace $40
> worth of hardware with less than $3 worth of hardware, and charge consumers
> nearly the same price.
>
> Remember, this is a community based on free software. If a piece of software
> is to be written, _someone_ has to write it. With a HUGE job of reverse
> engineering and fighting upstream to avoid infringements on software that is
> often a) patented and b) secret, it is downright amazing that as much
> progress as is current has been made.
>
> If one lives in the United States, he not only has to reverse engineer the
> product, but he also has to hire a lawyer to defend him in case he infringes
> inadvertantly on the secret, patented software for which it is a license
> violation(and likely a felony) to disassemble, even if it is for the purpose
> of avoiding infringements. For all of this effort, he receives notoriety as
> his only pay.
>
> On top of that, the problem has to be interesting to the programmer and he
> wants to see the product used. If you read the page at the linmodem site,
> the folks there are more interested in using the devices for telephony, where
> they are considered appropriate devices.
>
> Read a few of the posts from the archives, search on the word "Gandia".
> Ramon Gandia is an ISP in Nome, Alaska, and he often explained winmodems in
> detail. The other thing stopping more effort on them is that many potential
> developers feel they are doing users a _disservice_ by providing the drivers,
> because they cannot compare in quality of service to dedicated hardware
> modems.
>
> Civileme
>
>
>
