RE: Need a little help with sound and modem

["Poletti, Don" <don poletti comverse-in com>]

> The second problem I'm having is with my US Robotics 
> Sportster modem.  It is
> autodected and a com port is assigned, as it is a PnP card, 
> but the modem
> will not initialize and dial.  I have been told that it can 
> be difficult to
> get a modem working, however I don't know what to do from here.
> 

I Believe that the sportster is what is known as a WinModem. Meaning
that it only has half the hardware of a regular modem. The part that
is missing is handled by software. This modem will only work under
windows! You will probably have to get a different modem. It can be
hard to tell which are real modems and which are winModems because they
stop specifically calling them WinModems. However a rule of thumb is if it
costs less than $30 then it almost certainly a WinModem. US Robotics
tends to be expensive so even their WinModems cost alot. I have heard
some rumors that Kernal 2.4 will support winModems but I wouldn't
hold my breath, I think they said the groundwork for winmodems would
be in 2.4 whatever that means. It really sucks that windows does something
that Linux can't but that's the way it is.

If I'm wrong about it being a WinModem then after trying to connect
look in the file /var/log/messages for error messages. Other than
that you will have to post more information like how are you 
trying to connect? did you write a ppp-on script? What distro are
you using, they all handle ppp differently, are you using ppp?

Also this question is not Gnome related and should be posted else
where. There are some newsgroups for linux setup but I don't
know what they are off the top of my head.

> I would appreciate as much help as I can get.
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
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