[Gllug] Help wanted on installing PCI modems and fidning drivers

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 20:39, Paul wrote:

> First is finding PCI modems. I have several times put a PCI intel chipset
> onto a board. It is detected under /proc/pci, but there is not a IO address
> associated with it, making forcing the board to see it rhough set serial or
> similar hard. This seems to be where the modem HOW-to abandons me.
> I can put an external modem in in 2 minutes flat, but these just tend to
> stump me if not found automagically

Almost all PCI modems on sale are "winmodems" - they provide an
interface to a telphone line, but there is no DSP chip or serial port on
the board, which means that writing a driver for them is not simply a
case of driving the hardware; you have to write an entire v34 stack in
software. 

There are some binary only drivers available for some chipsets, but the
best advice regarding modems with Linux is just to buy only external
modems, and you'll not need to worry about it.

> Second is finding drivers. I know one should look through various sites,
> google etc. But I do this a lot. Is there a single repository that lists
> drivers by chipset/PCI number? Or is it back to google

No, there are sites for some specific subsystems (USB, firewire) that
list drivers by PCI id, but in general, you just have to scratch around.

I've found a good way of buying hardware is just to do "make menuconfig"
in my kernel source tree, and then make a list of supported devices in
the general area I'm looking for.

Mike.


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