If the people/person who sold that to you said it was a hardware modem then they lied.

Sorry... my fault for adding to the confusion... but I'm still stuck with it! I may just go and buy an external modem just to use on Linux, but that seems to be defeating the object... or do most Linux users use external serial modems? The I would have an internal, USB and an external modem - quite a collection!

On the upside, I'm learning one helluva lot about Linux trying to sort this out.

I bought a few too many modems while trying to get an answering machine to work via linux. I have a few winmodems if you want to try one, I could send you one for free. I'd like to see someone, anyone get one of them to work on linux! I have 3 - PCTel, Conextant and Lucient based ones.

I don't know if it would help any, but the 'vm' tool which comes with mgetty can output quite a bit of error logging. You might gain some hints by looking at the log after trying to use vm.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm building my own collection! I've been stealing modems from every spare computer I can find - I feel like an illegal organ transplanter.
And thanks for the 'vm' hint too I'll give it a try.

Just a big thank you to all who tried to help me solve my modem misery - I finally junked the PCI card I had been missold, got myself a serial modem and bingo - I now have internet access! All the pratting around I had done with old modem however, was very helpful in setting up the new one - setserial, statserial, devmodem etc...are now like old friends.

Everything is running just great - I am now very impressed with Linux and using it daily in my work.

So if anyone else is going through such misery, the magic words seem to be 'Rockwell chipset'.

Thanks agin for the help and a great site!

Now its my turn to put my questions for the same problem..I almost not almost all the same error which betwest has...I have internal modem U.S Robotics with 3com chipset AD1806JS. BTW I don't understand what is winmodem .. how do i find whether its a winmodem or what ??? Any help please.. its in com port 3 and my wvdial say no modem detected. I am using Suse 7.2

At linmodems.org.

To me this one is easy --- well sorta.

A couple years ago, when I was new to linux, I had this same issue and discovered this simple rule.

56K + PCI = WinModem

28.8K + ISA = real modem (LinModem)

the real key is if its ISA then chances are you won't have a problem.

another tip: read the box the modem came in if you can use it in MS-DOS then should be easy to setup in Linux