Finally a success!! Modem works
 

I haven't been posting for quite while since registering as I was getting very frustrated at Linux. But after many failed attempts at trying to get onto the internet with Linux, I have finally succeeded. It only took updating the V.92 on the US Robotics 5686D modem and installing the older Mandrake 9.0 (Dolphin). WOOOHOOO

Now if I can only get the fax thing to work, I'll swap my work computer completely over to Linux. Wish me luck.

As it becomes more successful, I'll let you all know!

Good to hear of a success story..

As for fax, I can heartily recommend efax and efax-gtk - perfect for a small personal fax solution and simple to set up. If you want a full-blown fax server instead, there's hylafax, but it's rather more complex and I don't have any experience with it....

Oh no. Spoke a little too soon. I can get onto the internet and connect around 49k. It works really well for a while and then Konqueror starts reading stalled at the bottom.
I did get the Kfax thing working and it says I have efax already, but I can't find it.
Anyone has any thoughts?

modem connect
 

Try to slow down your connection speed to around 30 to 40k and you should have less stalls.

You probably won't want to hear this after all the time spent on your USRobotics, but I have had more luck with installations and better connect and download speeds with an external serial hdwr modem. I went thru hell getting an Intel 536ep internal PCI modem to work with linux. (finally did, but similar problems as you).

Then one day I found a Diamond SupraExpress external serial modem at the local thrift shop for $3 and I've been buying them ever since for family and friends. They require NO DRIVERS and they are generally faster than some PCI modems. You still need to configure them in Kppp, but it's WAY faster and more productive until you get more experienced.

Good luck!

Is this an older computer you have? 49k is quite good for a v.90 connection... Stalls or as we used to call them, (over-run) error's are usually associated with a slow serial port or (UART) being only the 8250 variety. When the higher speed, (16550AFN) chips came out the over-run errors stopped...

Most Internal modems had the newer chips but if you had an external modem on an older system then the serial port would be slowing you down... This, however, has not been a concern for many yrs and is why I asked if this is an older system...

Lowering your connection rate will not help, however, it will only maybe stop the stalled error messages but wont be any quicker.

KC

Just an update
 

I seem to have gotten it working well on dialup. I can't tell you how, but I think it had to do with the phone cord I was using. I am now up and operational at work on a dual boot system. The main reason for dual boot is for faxing now. Kfax isn't what I need, but found Hylafax on the Mandrake CD and installed it. but can't find it in my menus. Anyone have any clues?

Thanks!

I have only faxed something once, and on Windows 3.11, but if you look at the package manager details info for hylafax, you can see where the program is installed. Then, running as root, you can run Menudrake, the menu setup program, and add a menu entry for Hylafax and any related programs to the system menu. I did this for a test version of Mozilla (bzipped, not an rpm) and it works fine.

PCI modems are a nuisance to set up, but many of them nevertheless are hardware modems instead of "winmodems." Mine is. What I don't understand is why another PCI device can be found, identified and set up during installation, but a PCI modem can't. The manual way to do it is to add a line to a startup file, "setserial this and that" to set the IRQ, port address and device identifier of the modem. Since this command in a text file wasn't executable and I didn't know how to change the attribute, I added the line to the network startup script file. Works fine. Also---a key shortcoming of the default file installation and package selection menu: setserial is not included. You have to search for it using a package manager, and then it is listed so you can install it. And it's absolutely necessary to install the very common PCI modems used in modern x86 systems.

Well, I added a menu item for hylafax and Menudrake says it is there, but when I go down the menu it is not there. Any suggestions?

That's odd. The only thing I can think of is that you added the menu item to the root user menu instead of the system menu accidentally. If so, you should see Hylafax on the root menu but not any regular user menus. If that's what you find, do the Menudrake thing as root, remove Hylafax from root's user menu, then run Menudrake again to add Hylafax to the system menu. If my guess about the problem is wrong, I don't have any other ideas, sorry.

One further idea: Menudrake lets you add, delete and otherwise modify menu items, but they don't go into effect unless you then go to the file menu of Menudrake and save your changes. I think that you can modify what's shown in the menu and then exit Menudrake without getting a prompt to save your changes. So you need to tell Menudrake to save your changes before you exit the program. It will then save the revised menu, perhaps to each user's home directory.

Thanks, will give that a try tomorrow. I appreciate the tips.

efax-gtk
 

Do you have experience using it? I manage to get it working but only to send faxes, it will not try to answer the phone to receive a fax. Any suggestions?