I have just started to mess with linux on a pentium 200. I have a USR 2976 modem that is supposed to have the kermit chipset and be easily detected by linux from what I have read.

Problem is that I don't know what COM port it is on in linux. I recently tried smoothwall and couldn't get it to dial at all. I tried COm 1 though 4 and nothing. I tried coyotelinux next and same problem. I had to install win98se with ICS back on the box as I need to have that USR modem doing the sharing as it is the only one in my house that can be kicked offline when someone calls using init strings.

After getting win98se back up and running (ugh) I did some looking and it says that the modem is on COM 5. COM 5 is a Virtual Port that windoze makes up.

How do I get linux to recongnize it?

Do I have to move the card to another PCI slot?
Am I grasping at straws here?

thanks for any help

com5 should be ttyS4.
Compare the output of #setserial -g /dev/ttyS4 with #cat /proc/pci and/or #lspci.
Setserial might not be included on your distro but it's small and easy to compile if you can't get a pkg for your particular distro.

Ok I had read that there were only 4 COM ports and COM 5 was a virtual port that windows made up.

I have done a lot more reading and now I see that my modem really is on COM 5 or ttyS04.
I have gotten the new beta of smoothwall 2.0 beta 4 and it still does not recognize the modem. sposed to be the easily configured kermit chipset??

I have tried changing the pci slot it is on and it names it different, but stays on the same ttyS04.

dmesg says
"send output of lspci -vv, this message (12b9, 1008, 12b9, 00aa) and manufacturer and name of modem to serial-pci-info@lists.sourceforge.net"

that does not sound easy to configure huh?

So how do I change what serial port it is on?

I had to modprobe in a specific serial module into the kernel, then, after configuring the /dev/ttys# link. it all worked. After that, I edited a file (what was it? /etc/modules.conf?) and have not had a problem since.

If you are really interested, here are the details: NewToLinux.org/uk