Winmodem Article and Until

[Jason]

http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/ArchiveAuthor/2F32F1EAB74E7830CC256D500015C2AC?OpenDocument

*Linux step by step — part 2*

Geoff Palmer 
<http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld%5Cpcw.nsf/ArchiveAuthor?OpenView&Startkey=Geoff+Palmer>
Monday, 30 June, 2003

/“Not tonight, dear. I have a modem.”/

If you installed Linux after last month’s column you’ve probably already 
hit the major downer; no modem. The problem is that many of today’s 
modems are partly software based and rely on drivers in the Windows 
operating system to make them work. Up until only a few years ago 
getting a so-called winmodem to work as a linmodem was a battle that 
involved wading through acres of technical documentation and 
experimenting with arcane Linux commands. These days however 
manufacturers are recognising that Linux users are starting to form a 
good part of their market and it’s actually in their interest to release 
drivers — or at least reveal the workings of their chipsets so that the 
user community can create their own.

From a user perspective there’s been a major advance in diagnostic 
tools to help winmodem users find a working driver. Certainly one of the 
most prominent has to be scanModem (on this month’s cover disk or a tiny 
20KB downloadable from this website 
<http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages>). It’s goal is to identify 
chipsets so that users “can be directed to sources of potentially 
supporting software”. But does it perform? I put it to the test.