Re: [PLUG] linux modems.

It used to be a major problem precisely because everyone was doing it. Back in the late 90s, when the modem was the on-ramp to the information state road, everyone wanted modems for 5$ each. In an effort to hit that ridiculous price point, the modem makers moved the device from an external fully-hardware device to an internal one with complex features offloaded to a binary-only Windows-only software device. Then they offloaded more features. Then they offloaded everything that wasn't explicitly physical. In the end, the worst winmodems were basically PCI connectors wired to telephone jacks, with hardly anything in-between, and huge Windows-only "driver" that did all the work.

As you can imagine, this raised some small difficulties.

Today, however, no one wants a telephone modem. This means the cheapest models have fallen away, which is bad for your wallet but good for functionality. I can't speak to the industry as a whole, but I've built two PCs with modems in the last 5 years or so, for friends who simply must have fax capability (one political, one medical). Both recent modem purchases have been fully hardware devices, even when shopping for lowest price.

The odds are in your favor, anyways.

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Chad Waters <chad@chadwaters.com> wrote:

So make when modems were more common I remember there being major issues getting them to work on linux.

How about today? Its been suggested that I use a modem for out-of-band access to some equipment at work. Is this feasible? I can't really test it because I don't have a POTS line at my desk (yet).

Thanks
Chad

___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug