> > Hey!
> >
> > Thanx a lot first of all!
> >
> > Anytime i CAN write something myself - i do. I can go as low as networking code
> > or pseudodevice driver. But i am at loss when it comes to hardware (and within
> > my scope of work etc. i doubt i will ever learn this stuff). Thats why i pleaded
>for help.
> >
> > I volonteer to be your first alpha-tester. I have this modem
> > blaster thing. It is PCI and it has a UART. I was going to sell it
> > and shell out lots of money for USRobotics 56K ISA real modem. BTW
> > they call it "legacy" modem - i think the general direction is such
> > that PCI will be the only kind available very soon...
>
> This is pretty much untrue, because not all applications (industrial
> applications) for modems have a PC to talk to, so it's totally
> impossible for conventional modems to go away. I used to make my living
> tending large banks of modems, and not all applications are 56K even,
> because they are only justified if you have a very large modem pool.
>
> I think you're panicking prematurely, Ugen. You're also checking the
> very bottom of the market, and you're exaggerating (in your comment
> about shelling out lot's of cash for a conventional modem) the cost of
> a regular modem. Things just aren't that desperate.
>
> It's possible the trend is in a direction I don't like, but I'll still
> keep my external conventional modem. It's 33.6, not 56, which means
> that my friends can dial into my system, which they can't do if it's a
> 56K. That's very nice sometimes.
>
Well, he's partially true.
We're looking at mass buying several thousand PCI modems. The cost for a
non-winmodem model is about 3x the Winmodem style. (You can buy winmodems
very cheap, since everyone is making them now. You can't buy non-winmodem's
cheap because only a few are doing it, and they now charge a premium for
this).
Another issue is the upcoming death of ISA. Several of Intel's next chipsets
don't support ISA at all, making this a somewhat timely problem.
Kevin
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