I am not that much of a newbie, but I saw other questions on here vaguely related to winmodems, so I thought Id ask anyway. I have been using linux for over a year now on my laptop and I have normally been able to fix the problems myself. I cant give any specific errors in this post, because I cannot connect to the net and post them with my laptop, but here is the stuff I sent to the linmodems mailing list..



I have made an entry on that website

pctelcompdb.sourceforgeDOTnet/viewdetails.php?id_no=224
Where u can find all the information relating to the chipsets and model numbers.

I have just installed SUSE 9 on my Dell laptop and the modem is detected by
YAST2 but does not work. When first detecting it, it doesnot allow you to select
from the list of dev entries because there is no list of /dev entries. If you step through the
setup a second time, you can select /dev/modem. However, it does not work. The
error given by kinternet is that there is no response from the modem. Minicom
says the modem is busy, WV dial reports an input/output error. I have tried
installing and compilling the pctel driver, but it does not make any difference.
However, the key to this I think is that /var/log/messages reports that the
parport module cannot load properly. As I dont have an internet connection, I cannot tell u the exact output, however it is something along the lines of

parport: cannot initialise device, device or resource busy


I have tried most things in the FAQ including changing the IRQ and checking the
links to /dev/modem. It appears that the highest ttyS device is 3. The others
(non GPL compliace) although I did have to hack the kernel version checker as it
didnt like the way SuSE had named the kernel with non numerical characters.

I am a little stuck as to why this doesnt work could it be related to APM and
ACPI?

It is strange because when it worked on SuSE 8.2, I had to select Other(not detected) from the list of modems, and now when it gives the chipset, it doesnt set it up
properly.

SUSE 9 also loads an IBM modem driver on startup which I tried disabling and it
made no difference. I also tried loading and unloading the sound drivers, which
again made no difference. I have also tried removing this parport and the module it uses ls (I think it is called).

I am rather annoyed about this as it worked perfectly in SuSE 8.2 and I may have
to downgrade until I can get it working or get DSL!

It is strange also that use claims to support 50% of Winmodems, but obviously forgot this one ;(