[TriLUG] ISA modems not really that bad.

[al johson]

> 1. Modem installations. My son (magna cum laude at Princeton in computer
> science!!) who can do just about anything in Linux did not know how to
> install a modem in his dad's Linux machine. And it was an ISA modem that
> was not a Winmodem!! Eventually it got installed but not until after a lot
> of reading, heartburn and online advice. Even though I've done it
> sucessfully once, I don't think I could do it again.

Here the problem is hardware (faulty or old or both). ISA "plug'n'play" is a
dreaded and plainly awful piece of engineering. Get yourself a nice,
external
(non-usb) modem and you have the modem isntalled in 3 minutes. Really. Just
plug the modem, launch Kppp, click, click, done.
===========
Actually, I probably over-stated the difficulty. As I discovered you're
actually better off with an ISA modem than a PCI!!

This is because most ISA plug-n-play modems can be "fixed" as it were by
simply changing a jumper on the modem which kills the plug-n-play nonsense.
Then it pretty much gets installed correctly by the distribution. So many of
the PCI modems are winmodems (except for those with high prices on them--US
Robotics has one which they claim is Linux ready and will easily install if
you have a specific kernel or higher). But some of the other PCI modems will
work on DOS and usually if they work on DOS they should work with LINUX.
External modems are not an option for those who lack desk space (which I
do). Actually there are solutions (some of them simple) for some winmodems,
because some folks in the Linux community realized the problem and have set
up a couple of websites to help. Actually, when I lost my motherboard which
had an ISA slot on it and I couldn't get another one with an ISA slot,
that's when my modem problems really began. ---Al Johnson