simon bridge.. i feel your pain .. A friend of mine is a RH certifiyed tech. he has been work on my linux box for a week now trting to get my 536ep to work .. no dice.. this has preplexed him to because all the files are in the right place but no working modem.. he is strongly suggesting that i just get a zoom or us robotics external modem (or high speed) and put away the winmodem as a spare in my win box.. food for thought..

Chances are it cannot be done! Write a nasty message to Intel... here's why:

The 536ep.o and 536epcore.o require access to GPL researved symbols to work. This access is denied in kernels post 2.4.20. So the modules will not go and Intel should not be claiming Linux compatability for this chipset. (Of course I may be wrong here but I suspect this is what is giving the trouble.)

On the intel site, there is a semi-open-source version of the driver/module. It may be worth trying that, but I suspect you'll get the same licence problem. The solution would be for Intel to open-source their driver modules. It's hard to see how knowing the module source could help a competitor reverse engineer their chipset but it may be what they fear.

Just in case, here is a titbit for hardware geeks out there -

I tried using the modem to log onto a dial-up bbs a freind had. I was able to type in my name before the modem stopped echoing my keyboard input but he was able to send to me for longer.

It would appear that after logging on to your ISP, a dialog occurs in which the ISP waits to receive a confirmation of some kind from your computer. Your computer sends the conf. to the modem to pass on then waits for the reply from the ISP. However, the modem dosn't send the conf on - I suspect it doesn't receive it because the driver isn't properly built.

Unless future kernels have explicit support for HaM modems I don't hold out much hope getting it going. (Note, the original poster got it going, but what kernel was he using!)

Simon

PS: give my e-mail to your RHCT freind - we can put our heads together.

PPS: note: since the module is non GPL, encorporating it in your kernel will corrupt the kernel - and thus any kernel problems are your problem.

Uninstalling the driver involves reversing the install instructions... you need to delete /dev/536ep rmmod the modules and delete them and also find and remove the 536ep-boot script so you don't keep seeing [failed] messages at boottime.

simon .. with the error message is it just asthetic on the start up to have the boot command gone .. if the removal of the boot command is going to cause a system crash then i would just preferred to leave it installed ..

With any fiddling - make sure your boot disk works BEFORE you fiddle.
However:

you should be able to remove the 536ep-boot script with no trouble, the kernel will work without it.

You shouldn't crash - the worst that can happen is you'll get a message saying the script wasn't found.

However, let me know the second it dosn't do what I say it does
Simon

well after about three hours of poking around at the 536ep file; my friend has finally got the winmodem to work ..

it took a PEARL script and a little emacs to get it to work .
also you must make sure that you use the file for what ever version of RH you are using .. it seems that the script was looking for something .
there is a tarball that is "for all " versions for RH .. DO NOT USE IT . intel536ep.460.al.tgz - if you see this file and are running RH8 or 9 skip over it ..

i now have to get my speed up ; it is around 11.0 bytes a second. just have to find and adjust the settings .

my advice stay away from the intel536ep chipset unless you can do serious script writing.


get an external hardware modem . i might still do that if i do not get high speed soon.

Excellent - I am using the correct one, please post the pearl script and emacs work. Maybe describe the problem too as well as how to fix it.

Thanx - from all of us. Simon