On Wednesday 03 October 2001 03:06 pm, you wrote: > Winmodems were produced to accomplish 2 things: > > 1) Reduce the cost of computers by reducing the cost of the components. > Winmodems are much less expensive to produce since they lack the > circuitry of a real modem. It's basically just a interface to a phone > jack. The OS then has to act as the modem, putting asignificant load on > the CPU. > Yes, the CPU can usually bear the load of doing the work the Modem is > supposed to. And if you're only interested in running games, and surfing > the net, then you won't notice this, and probably don't need Linux > anyway. Personally, I use my Linux boxes for other things, and I want > the hardware to do what it's supposed to, so that my CPU can do what > "it's" supposed to.
That's not true. Winmodems came out at the same time as a number of digital signal processing units. It was for cost savings because a given DSP with the proper software could be a modem, soundcard, game controller or whatever. It is true that DSP devices use the CPU and that's why they weren't practical until high speed processors came out (actually 486). Think back to when modems went from 28.8 to 33.6 to 56K in about 12 months. For 56K, there were competing standards. Some modems had flash roms that could be updated, but most didn't (as a side, if a modem uses software onboard to change the way it works, isn't it still a software modem?). Updating flash roms was not something most users wanted to do, nor was flash ram cheap. DSP devices sought to solve that problem. No longer would you need to worry about modem standards and features changing. Just download the latest driver and you were ready to go. As for speed degragation, lets be real. An older Pentium runs at 166MHZ the most my modem (hard or soft) can do is 56K. The CPU utilization should be minimal (even the drivers have a small footprint). Nobody seems to slam ethernet cards because they have to run Samba to talk to a Windows network. Wouldn't the connection be faster if the ethernet card was hardwired for Samba? > 2) To marry you to Windows. > Once you're running Win(crap) hardware, you "can't" defect, and run an > alternative OS. Usually the cost & inconvenience of upgrading that $100 > speed demon box to a real computer is more than the average user will > bear. Thus cementing their aligence to M$. Afterall, why change when > M$(crap) is so cheap?!? Why should I spend more on hardware just to run > Linux... I bet if you did a survey, there are a lot more Linux boxes running on that "cheap" hardware than on 2GHZ boxes. > If you want to run a real OS, you'll need real hardware. Haven't you > wondered why a "workstation class" machine is so much more expensive? > It's build to last, with quality parts. The bargain basement "Multimedia > Windows" desktop machines just don't have that quality. They're the ones > that cause so many people, so many "odd" problems. I always thought that a "workstation class" machine is so much more expensive because of proprietary parts and lack of competition, not because of the quality. The original IBM PC/XT was something like $4,000. An average midrange PC today is in the $1,000 to $2,000 range. Using your reasoning, the XT is the better hardware. For the record, the purpose of my post was not to say that everyone should embrace soft modems. The tendency on the list has been to slam them outright instead of offering support to the person requesting help. That does a disservice to the person asking the questions, discourages them from seeking further help from this forum and ultimately discourages trying linux as an alternative. For the benefit of those who pay per minute for internet access and those with slow connections, I do think it is time to let this topic die off. Let's just agree to disagree. Joe -------------------------------------------------------
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