> > Actually the most likely reason has been touched on three or four times, > but not been followed up on. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. >
If it has been 'touched on' maybe you should make it explicit. I must confess to have lost the thread a bit. Anyway, I just plugged a PCMCIA modem into the ThinkPad and got kppp going without too much trouble. Things I had to do: First, kppp couldn't find the modem, and I didn't know what port it had appeared on. Kppp puts a lock file on the port and then takes forever to figure out there's no modem. I installed wvdial "just to see". wvdial found the modem, dialled out, tried to send the username and password, then barfed. Anyway, by looking at /etc/wvdial I found out where the modem was, entered it into kppp and presto! Third time I got though. I had to delete the occasional lock file and spare kppp processes that I killed impatiently waiting for it to time out. I didn't have to do anything with /etc/ppp/options... So, tomorrow I will verify it all works (still) then arrange to see Alan. If my machine connects to his ISP with his username and password then that gets rid of some of the simpler possibilities (esp. as we are both running Mepis 6.0), and I will follow the other suggestions here. And yes, I'll try not to overlook the simple and obvious stuff first. A
