weird modem problem
 

OK - here's the lowdown - my sis in law bought a laptop with no OS and wanted Linux - which I happily installed for her (mandrake 9.0). I even got her modem working which is a smartlink modem (they provide drivers for linux).

When she left my house, she had just come off the internet, a happy girl.

However, when she tried it at home, she plugs the modem cable in her phone socket (BT in UK) and then in to the laptop (even when it is switched off) she loses her dialling tone. Interestingly, when the cable is not plugged in her laptop, she gets the dialling tone.

It's as if the laptop is killing her dialling tone.

She tried this at her parents and the same happened.

Anyone have any ideas what might have happened here?

She's coming over to mine tonight to see what could have happened, but I'm putting the feelers out to see if anyone has ever dealt with this before - I know I haven't

Thanks in advance.

Hi
Yes weird indeed, i have seen some similar things, but
they were not -exactly- caused by the modem itself.
I don't know what socket/plug BT is using, but some of the
piggy back plug/socket's i have seen were faulty. Those
are the sockets where you can put the original phone
plug in and this all together in the wall socket.
But i think that is not the problem here, if you get the
modem out of the laptop with the cable still connected, the
problem remains ??
How many telephones are connected in your sisters house,
alltogether with additional answering machines etc.
Putting too many of them together on one in/out going line
can drop your dialtone (at least in my country it can)
So maybe unplug some or all but one just to test.
Out of thoughts now
good luck

I have the exact same problem with my machine using RH8 and USR external 56k modem. Haven't figured it out either. We have 5 phones hooked up in the house and I unhooked all of them except the modem and it still kills dial tone. If I let it sit unplugged for about 10 minutes, the phone resets itself.

the only workaround I found is not have phone cord plugged into modem at startup. but I am open to suggestions.

I had a similar problem a while ago...
When I turned the computer on and booted into Linux, the phones would go dead. All of them, you couldn't get a dialling tone from anywhere in the house. I eventually tracked it down and turning off the setting to connect to the internet seemed to stop it from happening. I think Mandrake was trying to connect to the internet at boot-time, but I hadn't supplied any ISP info and so it would just open the phone line and sit there...

That helps me a little, but I am using KPPP to dial and I know that setting is not set to dial in KPPP.

So...My newbie question o' the day is then.....where is the file that tells it to dial during startup?

Goto Mandrake Control Center (drakconf), then click on 'Network and Internet Connections'. On the right of the screen you should get something come up about your LAN and Internet connection settings. In the internet connection settings, there may be something about starting things on bootup. If not, then, still in MCC, go to the icon called System (on the lest) and then click on services (on the right). Find 'Internet' in the list and uncheck the 'on boot' button. Also, you might want to click on the stop button.

HTH.

????How Bout RedHat 8.0

Sorry about that... went and looked at first post to see what distro was being used. Obviously, the first post wasn't you... d'oh!

Can you run linuxconf? I don't know if that's still installed on RH.

I'm not sure if Thymox is replying to me - but just to update everyone on this one - the cable was duff - replaced that and all is fine -which is a relief because it really had me baffled.

I'm not sure if Thymox is replying to me - but just to update everyone on this one - the cable was duff - replaced that and all is fine -which is a relief because it really had me baffled.

Well, to be honest, I wasn't... I was replying to matpoh... but I hadn't realised that at the time, hence the reference to Mandrake instead of RH. I have a tendency not to read who wrote what... :( Anyway, it's good that you've got your modem probs sorted... or rather your sis in law's modem probs sorted :D