lub997
Group: Members
Posts: 26
Joined: July 2005 |
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Posted: Sep. 17 2005,20:30 |
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People have always told me that I couldn't use my winmodem with Linux, and they have always been wrong. I have successfully used my Lucent/Agere WinModems in my various different computers with Red Hat 7.0, Red Hat 7.3, SuSE 8.1, SuSE 9.1 Pro, and Core Linux. I remember once walking into Best Buy or CompUSA; can't remember which, but it was a long time ago when linux was a new thing, and most people didn't know about it yet, and I was amazed that they were actually selling boxed versions of Red Hat and Mandrake and SuSE in a retail computer store, and the salesman, very surprised that someone was actually looking at the linux section and not just walking right on through it came up to me and started telling me all he knew about linux which wasn't much because he of course wanted to sell me something, and so I discussed linux with him, and he brought up the topic of modems, and told me in these exact words "you will never get a winmodem to work on linux; you might as well throw it away," then he proceeded to comment that "don't you think Linux is kind of weird?" as he walked on to the aisle stocked full of Windows XP boxes. I thought this was extremely humorous, as I was already using a winmodem and had been for a long time on Red Hat 7.0 publishers edition which I got free in a Linux for Dummies book. My point is, people always assume that you cannot use a winmodem or that it would be very difficult and not worth your time to use a winmodem on Linux, when this is absolutely not the case. With one simple download on your web browser, and 3 easy commands, <<./configure>>, <<make>> and <<make install>> (must be root), you can magically transform nearly any WinModem into what is called a LinModem. Just as was previously said, a WinModem is a software modem that requires special software to make it work correctly and cannot work correctly by its own hardware alone. So, why couldn't this software be created on Linux? It has been, and it works great.
You can find all kinds of information about transforming your WinModem into a LinModem at:
http://linmodems.org/
You can find the driver you need at:
http://www.heby.de/ltmodem
If I remember right, installation is just like installation of anything else on Linux:
tar -xzvf ltmodem-8.31a10.tar.gz
cd lt*
./configure
make
make install (must be done as root)
Installation may be slightly different than this, but shouldn't be too far different, and once you do <<cd lt*>> you might find a file called INSTALL or README in that directory which will tell you exactly how to compile and install the driver, plus probably how to use it too once you have installed it, as one or both of these files are generally included with most Linux software that you have to compile and install. This is all from memory though, so don't quote me as I haven't used a modem at all in a long time. I'm really actually quite surprised that DSL does not provide a ltmodem.dsl for this driver, as nearly every modern Linux distribution provides an RPM file that just installs the ltmodem driver for you precompiled. I know SuSE does. Because DSL does not, you will have to compile your driver from source. Once you get it compiled though it should work great. I have had no bad experiences with the ltmodem driver, and have used it with every modem I have ever had since it's hard to find a modem at any store that isn't a winmodem these days.
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Anyway thats a long story...