[Westwales] Modems and filesystem formats

[P.L.Hayes]

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On Saturday 12 July 2003 12:52 pm, Jon Pearse wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   Coupla questions here:
>   1) Having just acquired a new modem (eventually) -and- got it
> working under MacOS X (this is harder than it looks on an old
> machine like mine), I decided to boot up into Linux and try to get
> it working there. The internet connection wizard in YDL3 (Sirius)
> doesn't find the moment, but does give me a list of choices for
> various /dev addresses. How do I find out which address to use for
> the modem. It's worth pointing out that hardware browser doesn't
> detect the modem either.
>
>   2) I'm running Linux on my PowerMac G3, on which all the other
> drives are HFS+ (MacOS Extended) format which YDL can't read/write
> to - thus meaning I effectively have two computers that I have to
> use my zip drive to transfer stuff between (ugh). I know that
> there's a kernel update that supports this, and while I was at uni I
> downloaded it along with the kernel source (all 26 megs of it -
> thank god for high-speed connections), applied the patch,
> reconfigured the kernel, compiled it and *wham* It fails to compile
> due to something-or-other being missing.
>   Now I know that I'm probably the only Mac Linux user (if that makes
> sense) on this mailing list, but has anyone else had this problem
> whilst recompiling the kernel, and does anyone know how I can get
> solve it.
>
>   Thanks
>
> -Jon
>
> ---------------------
> http://www.jonpearse.net - http://users.aber.ac.uk/jnp2
>        jon@jonpearse.net - jnp2@aber.ac.uk
>
> Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while
> and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.
>

 Hi Jon, your modem is presumably an external modem connected to a serial p=
ort =20
and will probably appear as /dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1 (I assume a Mac has on=
ly=20
two serial ports like most pcs ?). You could try using minicom (but see kpp=
p=20
comment below)  to check which one it is and you will also be able to verif=
y=20
that it responds as expected to the ATI commands that your connection wizar=
d=20
will want to send to it.
=20
 External modems won't generally be detected by the system or by hardware=20
detectors that may be designed to run at boot time.
This is because modem detection involves very slow active probing of the=20
serial port and if you look at the mgetty/vgetty code which does do=20
rudimentary detection of some modems you will see that it is a bit of a=20
nightmare from a coder's point of view - I had to hack the vgetty detection=
=20
code for my net-lynx because it's ATI id string (set by the oem) is identic=
al=20
to a completely different modem.

  It is also the case that external modems are all mostly identical as far =
as=20
dialling an ISP is concerned, so once you point your wizard or whatever at=
=20
the right device it should sail through it's setup procedure.  If it does n=
ot=20
you may need to modify the ATI strings that control the modem's operation. =
=20
If you are using kppp to manage your connection, you can forget about minic=
om=20
as it has everything you need,  including a modem terminal.

If however, what I've just written is utter garbage because you are in fact=
=20
talking about a USB ADSL modem for example, I'd need to know exactly which=
=20
model it is first.

As for your patched kernel problem - you need to be more specific about wha=
t=20
went wrong - what is missing,  what was the error message and in which step=
=20
of the build process?

Regards, Paul.
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