Firstly, you need not > disable Com 2 in the system BIOS - oumpf, how's that done there ? -, but just leave the BIOS settings what they are (re serial ports, AFAIK the BIOS just looks and registers what's there); real _settings_ are done with the jumpers.
Hmm, somewhat cumbersome to use setserial to find out what the actual settings of the jumpers are. If you can run DOS, there's number of small utilities (take IRQCHECK which you can find at my place) which immediately tell - no need even to reboot, you can change jumper settings live, and if you do it cautiously you can even take out and re-seat the comm-card (question of getting at the dang jumpers.) Once you got jumpers for port and IRQ right to what you want them to be, "setserial" will indeed be needed for any combination which is _not_ COM1-IRQ4 or COM2-IRQ3. (These latter, I found out to my hard surprise, are hardwired to the kernels. Nothing to do, as far as I could find out, with the capability or not to check for ISA devices.) Place a pertinent "setserial" command line _early_ into one of the startup batches. Another hitch: this latter step will _not_ be sufficient to make the Mandrake system find/activate the modem - not even with "linuxconfig" or similar... but the setup in "kppp" will indeed do it. (And _after_ having run that, even the Mdk-specific console command "ifup pppN" will work; heaven knows why, I never got some insight on this in an earlier thread here in this list on this and had to try out with _many_ errors.) So that would confirm your heuristic approach indeed - > perhaps if I simply (1) configured the modem to a specific port and (2) > told kppp that the device was at that port I would be done. But you have to decide on _setting_ which IRQ too. More on that to follow. BTW, a Debian sytem would indeed have enough with this... but only with running in console mode - g(nome)ppp wouldn't connect the modem there, you'd have to open a console terminal to start it. (Heaven is asked for an answer again. And don't ask _me_ about the myriad of "permission" questions raised if "a user", and not "root", wanted to start a ppp connection. Arghhh.) At the root of the problem is indeed not the setting of the port address but that of the irq number (and eventually resulting interrupt conflicts which are quite difficult to find out about - there's _no_ reliable error notification of _any_ sort in those cases but just everything else which would eat your time and nerves to find out to be a dead-end.) Therefore, choosing a liable IRQ-no. is decisive. There, and astonishingly, a mixture of PCI- and ISA-devices is quite well digested by most systems/distros. (Possibly because the distribution of IRQs on the PCI bus is more flexible; I see your example for the soundcard quite often, most of them "want" IRQ 5 and then get another one and are content with it.) Looking in /proc/(io-ports, interrupt[s] ? - forgot the _correct_ syntax, looking _this_ up would take anolther more long minutes) may give a hint to the _presently_ used ones. Some are "untouchables" and will show up as that (0, 1, or 14 and 15, IIRR) but astonishingly - again - one _can_ share unused ones, e.g. 2 and 9 (which are often "cascaded" in the BIOS or even hardwired as such, and usually for the first parallel/printer port) between _physically_ unused devices at a given moment. Chances are good that the modem - with use for dial-in connections - is needed when a printer (mostly on Irq 2, 7, or 9) is not switched on. (Someone knowledgeable about this ? I found, by trial and error, that "the system" quite well reserves an IRQ for the printer[s] but is tolerant about using that IRQ, _if_ that printer is not "on", for a temporary modem connection; possibly because Linux printing just would not _employ_ IRQs but "polls" ? Anyway it _works_ like that, and with both ISA and PCI multiport comm-cards... Thanks, Heaven.) A REMark on Mandrake "9.1" (haven't used it yet, latest here is 8.2) - that one is boasted with a "minimum install below 70 MB" and thus, _should_ be appropriate for "unmodern" machines. (Heaven, please pardon me that I run all my mailing with a laughable non-system which takes just a bit more than 3 MB only.) In my - certainly limited - experience Mandrake hitherto was the "distro" which did cope comparably well with hardware detection; and at least up to "8.2" (and I think that was the last version before "9.0") did this quite well with all sorts of ISA devices, other distros needing much more "manual" work to have them recognize such gadgets. So question: Is that capacitxy there gone too ? (Ouff, no need to "upgrade" that one then ever again.) // Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2003-06-08 The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.revobild.net - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
