Iv been told to buy an serial external modem,I have got a winmodem and it dose not work.

I am currently runing suse 7.3 ,but will i have to install any drivers on these types of modems.

I am thinking of buying an
D-Link 56K /V.90 Data Voice FAX External Modem
or an Creative Blaster 56K V.92 Serial Modem.

dose any on know if it will work under suse 7.3 personal will i have to install any drivers?

be very great full for any help

hmmm, well, from what i know about modems, there are two main categories of modems.. hardware modems and software modems (winmodems). as long as it's not a winmodem it should work with linux without any aditional drivers, i would recommend a serial modem if you have the choice which it seems you do i'd say either of those will work

I bought me a US Robotics 56k performance pro modem model# 5610B. It failry good but it says its a v.92 modem but i never get over 31k even though my old winsoft v.92 modem got 46k(on windows). It works with SuSE 8.2 and 9.0 it only takes a few shell commands to set up. The only thing that I didn't like was the cost, it was 79.95... and its just a modem.

Actiontec 56k external modem, is low priced and reliable. I've had mined for 2yrs and no problems yet

I would look on ebay for a lucent venus or one of the clones that use the lucent venus chipset, in my experience the actiontec that I have works with out any configuration under SuSE 9.0 check out www.linmodems.org to see if your modem has a chipset that is supported.

thanks for all your help
Im going to buy the d-link modem.

but some one said ,you have to use a shell commands to set up the modem. how do I do this. and what is a shell command

shell commands are the commands you type at the prompt... i think wvdialconfig is the program you are looking for.... there are gui dialers that work as well that can configure your modem... also,
ln -s /dev/ttySX /dev/modem
to create a link from /dev/ttySX (replace the X with the number of your serial port, 0 for com 1 1 for com 2, etc...) to a special pointer /dev/modem...

Any generic RS-232 serial modem based on a Rockwell chipset will do just fine. I have an old $45.00 v.90 modem and it works like a charm.

By the way, I would upgrade from SuSE 7.3... I personally use 8.2 and sometimes I am behind the curve.

I have an external serial modem on each of my two computers. Both work well under Linux. I did install any special drivers. I have mostly used them with several different versions of Red Hat Linux. When configuring the modem I seleced external serial modem but did not need to specify the brand of modem. It asked where my modem was mounted. On my computer with RH 9 or Fedora Core 1 COMM1 is /dev/tty/s0. If it had been connected to COMM2 it would have been /dev/tty/s1. It referred to what I have as a generic modem. Sometimes when configuring the modem it was able to detect the modem, sometimes it couldn't. Even when it was not detected, it took my word for it that it was really there and the modem worked just fine. I have never used the shell commands to set up my modem. I am not familiar with doing it that way or how SuSE does it. In RH 9 I typed neat at the command line which is a program that that I used to configure the modem and Internet connection. I did not create any links like Fieza had to do. Perhaps "neat" did that for me.

I have used the Zoom modem back since when I was using RH 7.3 . At the moment I use Red Hat 9 and Fedora Core 1. On my old computer I used he external serial modem for Linux and let Windows ME keep on using the internal modem. The internal modem was trying up resources that made my 2nd serial port unuseable and my external modem would only work when connected to COMM 1. Eventually, I yanked the internel modem out of the computer and told Windows to use that modem too. I then went into the BIOS setup menu and changed a setting that made my other serial port useable too.

Everyone in my neighborhood connects at only 26.4 K no matter what they use. For me that has happened with Windows 98, Windows Millenium, Windows 2000, Windows XP, RH 7.3, RH 8.0, RH 9, SuSE 8.1, and Fedora C 1. It has happened with several different computers most of which had internal modems. My neighbors also connect at that speed. Even the telephone company repairman could only connect his laptop at 26.4 K. They all had 56K V.92 modems. At one time the telephone company told me that our neighborhood had a trunk line in which the bandwidth was divided up with 26.4 K allocated per user.

I still use the older Zoom modem on one computer and also have a Hays Accura External V.92 Fax Modem with Linux. My understanding is that there are no (or virtually no) external serial modems that are winmodems. Unfortunately, however many external USB modems are winmodems. Internal modems can be used (even many winmodems) but an external serial modem would be the safest choice and should be easy to configure. The best thing about an external modem is the flashing red LEDs which tell me what the modem is doing at any moment.

Ooops, I ment to say above that I DID NOT install any special drivers. I somehow left out the word not.

Since Creative has yet to support their Modem Blaster USB modems under linux, I would not buy ANY modems from them!!

Considering the state of USB support in Linux, judging from my own experience and that of people trying to mount USB Mass Storage devices in this forum,... I don't blame Creative one bit for not supporting their USB modems...

thanks for all your help

I am going to buy the d-link modem

I will be online with linux soon