An SOS for Linux Users

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hey there, penguinites.

Lemme give you a little background on the story before I get into the problem directly.

My other harddrive (I’m on my Windows one right now) used to run Linux, though it did have problems recognizing my modem. At the time the sysadmin whom I worked for breezed through the problem without explaining what he did. Regardless, the system was working fine up until a while ago.

For some reason Mandrake 7 just hated my monitor. I could not get past the Lilo prompt before my monitor would just go kerfluey. I tried xfree86config and all sorts of stuff, but never could get it to work.

Earlier this week, I went to a friend’s house, downloaded and burnt the ISOs for Mandrake 9 and installed them without a problem. Or at least, so I thought.

Now Mandrake once again does not find my modem. I have googled this problem, coming up with numerous sites, unfortunately none of them helping. I did download the new driver from the manufacturer (Motorola SM56 [PCI]) but even after an install I still can’t get Mandrake to notice my modem.

Some support sites recommended running sndconfig (Don’t know why the problem would be the sound card) and setserial. I do not have setserial and stty just doesn’t seem to do anything.

My Modem is in Com2, I’ve set the dialer to use both /dev/modem as well as ttys1, but neither seems to work. I just keep getting, “Sorry, no modem detected.”

I’ve even run LinuxConf and tried to autodetect it on any and all ports, and can’t find anything.

So I turn to you, Linux Dopers. Please help me. This would be solved if I went broadband (it found my NIC just fine) but unfortunately I don’t have the money for that just yet.

If anyone can reply or e-mail me about this, I’d be more than happy for the help given.

2

Ahoy hoy, matey. I had some suspicions and a quick trip through google confirms it: http://www.modemsite.com/56k/sm56.asp

What you got there is a WinModem, i.e. not really a full modem. According to the modem site, one of the models can work under Linux, but speaking as the President of the local Linux User Group, I have never, ever seen a WinModem working under Linux. Heard about it, but we’ve failed 100% of the time.

‘Regular’ modems are easy to be had secondhand, especially now the with all the broadband adoption. Try ebay. Shouldn’t cost you more than $10-$15 USD, I’d think.

You’re doing all the right things to get it to work, btw.

3

Yeah, I knew that going on. Didn’t mention it because I thought it was assumed. Didn’t mean to give anyone extra work.

The thing that bugs me is that it was working at one point. I may just have to dig out that old external Modem Blaster…but even windows wouldn’t find that for some ungodly reason.

I’m glad I was at least doing something right. I’m fairly new to Linux and had only worked with Slackware for about a week…and never got much experience with this stuff.

I’ll have to check and see if Peach Pit have any books on Mandrake. Considering everything else seems to read like greek stereo instructions.

4

Since you’re relatively new to unix/linux you might consider switching from Mandrake to RedHat or Suse. They’re the two most “commercial” forms of linux with the most support.
BTW, congratulations on a fine assessment from unixrat.