I'm having trouble connecting to the internet on a Mandrake distro and I think I may have a problem with my modem but I don't know how to troubleshoot.

Is there a command I can run that can reveal if I even have a modem ( I should have) and what the path to my modem is?

Thanks for your help.

Internal or external?
If internal, real modem or winmodem?


Cheers,
Tink

Thanks for your response.

My modem is internal.

What is the difference between a real modem and a winmodem? How can I tell which one I have?

In brief (and technically not necessarily 100% correct):
winMODEMs use the CPU to do the work,
real modems have signal processors


To find out what it is:

In linux, open a terminal, become root
type
lspci -v<enter>


Cheers,
Tink

Thats interesting...I entered lspci -v and much information was returned. But oddly I don't recognize the modem. It does look like a list of hardware though...

Host bridge..
PCI bridge...
CardBus bridge...
CardBus bridge..
Bridge...
IDE Interface...
USB Controller...
Multimedia audio controller..

Communication controller .. - (is this it?) -- Ah yes... Lucent Microelectronics LT WinModem.
Subsystem: Askey Computer Corp.: Unknown device 4005
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 5
Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, non prefetchable) [size=256]
I/O ports at 1080 [size=8]
I/O ports at 1800 [size=256]
Capabilities: [f8] Power Management version 2

VGA compatible controller..

in mandrake 9.2 and there is a network & internet tab in the Mandrake Control Center. this may help you setup and configure your modem (didn't help me though....some other apps include: wvdial, minicom, and kppp. i havn't used the others but with kppp you can query for your modem on different ports. the console command $ cat /proc/pci will also give you some good information.....look for what's underneath "communication controller" for info on your modem (i'm assuming its a pci modem). you also may want to check out http://www.linmodems.org/ that site helped me to install my LT WinModem. they also describe the differences between the different types of modems.

ugh....i type to slow =( linmodems.org is definitely worth check out though

Where is the Mandrake Control Center..

I don't have wvdial installed. I tried running wvdialconf and it said that the file was not found.

I'd like to try kppp so I can determine conclusively where my modem is. How can I do that? Is it installed with Mandrake 8.1?

I'm going the check out that website. I too have a LT WinModem.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks to you both.

/me is confused ... I thought you had RedHat? :)

The linmodem site, however, should help ;)


Cheers,
Tink

since we know now that it is indeed a winmodem the madrake control center is no help. buried somewhere in the linmodem site is a link to a "how to" for LT winmodems but in case you can't find it here it is http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mert1313/ltmodem.html
since the modem isn't natively supported i don't think you will be able to find it using any of the modem configurators/dialers. the "how to" will tell you how to find out pretty much everything you need to know (if you're patient enough). after you're done with that you can then use wvdial or kppp to query for the modem or dial out....kppp found my modem automatically after i installed the drivers. to run kppp just type " kppp " in the console. if it can't find it you need to install the rpm (look for rpmdrake in your menu...not sure if 8.1 has this same feature as 9.2 but i imagine there would be something similar).

Tinkster - You are right. I do have Red Hat. That is what I normally work with. But right now, for testing purposes, I need to get a Dial up connection going on a machine with Mandrake 8.1 installed.

I went to the website that GrapeApe mentioned and downloaded what I think is a driver for Mandrake. The instructions told me to remove the symbolic link I had created (in error) earlier. In the process I removed the entire directory. (Did I mention I am new to Linux? )

I hope I can just mkdir as root - mkdir /dev/modem And all will be well ?

Ouch...


That's mknod in this case, devices aren't "normal"
directories... I'm not sure which major/minor modes
MDK expects there, though ... ask another MDK
user here what their ls -l modem says, and read
man nknod

Errh ... but then, on second though, /dev/modem
probably actually just was a link anyway. The *real*
modem devices are called /dev/ttySXX


Cheers,
Tink

P.S.: My apologies, I'm having a blond day ...

Thanks so much for your continued time and effort here...

You're probably right. I'm probably toast. I may be spending tomorrow re-installing my OS we'll see.

Then again, the directory originally was empty and I think you are right my modem is tty something...

I didn't mean to imply though that if I just recreated the directory that I would get online. I know I need to install drivers and so forth.

I found some rpms on that website and I am attempting to load those.

Here goes...

Ah Failed dependencies..I downloaded the wrong files for my kernel..

How do I find out what my Kernel is?

$ uname -r

the /dev/modem/ on my machine was a link to /dev /ttySLTO

Hmm...now I know why my linux box slows down (much worse, it hangs when I'm connected to the internet. I'm also using an internal winmodem. Does replacing it with an external one dramatically improve my system's performance when I'm connected to the net???