I've bought a US Robotics 56k external fax modem with the hope that it would be a doddle to get this up and running but I've had absolutely no luck whatsoever so far.

I enabled my serial port (com1, ttyS0) in the BIOS and this is working fine, I plugged in the modem, turned it in and booted the machine but I can't find the modem.

If I try in SuSE YaST2 when detecting modems the lights on the modem briefly light up but it says that it can't detect any modem

I've tried using minicom in Slackware and again no luck

I've also tried it in windoze but this also fails (the lights light up briefly during detection but after that it says it hasn't found any new hardware, I've also tried installing manually but again no luck)

can someone tell me what's wrong? I'm at a total loss

the modem serial # is 64-24560-04 if it helps.

hmmm, do you have a dialer such as kppp installed? see what happens if you try to detect a modem with the dialer, if that does not work, try manually configuring the settings in the dialer (/dev/ttyS0 baud rate (probably you will want 115200 for a 56k modem), etc... and see what happens

yeah, I've got kppp installed. I've tried querying the modem and it runs through all the ATI commands and I get nothing but blanks in every box, which worries me quite a lot! The modem LEDs flash during the ATI query.

If i set-up an account then when i dial out it reaches the initializing modem command and then just hangs (I assume this is related to the lack of ATI query results!)

my first thought is that the firmware is messed up, any thoughts?

hmm, post the output of statserial /dev/ttyS0
it should look something like this
Device: /dev/ttyS0

Signal Pin Pin Direction Status Full
Name (25) (9) (computer) Name
----- --- --- --------- ------ -----
FG 1 - - - Frame Ground
TxD 2 3 out Transmit Data
RxD 3 2 in - Receive Data
RTS 4 7 out 1 Request To Send
CTS 5 8 in 1 Clear To Send
DSR 6 6 in 1 Data Set Ready
GND 7 5 - - Signal Ground
DCD 8 1 in 1 Data Carrier Detect
DTR 20 4 out 1 Data Terminal Ready
RI 22 9 in 0 Ring Indicator

Here's the output from statserial /dev/ttyS0:-

Signal Pin Pin Direction Status Full
Name (25) (9) (computer) Name
----- --- --- --------- ------ -----
FG 1 - - - Frame Ground
TxD 2 3 out - Transmit Data
RxD 3 2 in - Receive Data
RTS 4 7 out 1 Request To Send
CTS 5 8 in 1 Clear To Send
DSR 6 6 in 1 Data Set Ready
GND 7 5 - - Signal Ground
DCD 8 1 in 1 Data Carrier Detect
DTR 20 4 out 1 Data Terminal Ready
RI 22 9 in 1 Ring Indicator

hmm, well it indicates that the modem is attached properly and at least the computer recognizes there is a serial device that can transmit and recieve data, so that part is working

that sounds to me like a "the lights are on but nobody's home" scenario

I'm guessing that there's nothing I can do beyond this point since the modem is a sealed box?

hmm, what is the exact model of this modem?

I've been having trouble working that out since it doesn't actually seem to be a standard us robotics modem

Where the normal US Robotics serial # is a sticker has been placed on it with the following

Assembled in Romania
64-245630-04
1MBWF25DBBQ6

I've done some searches on the net without much luck, I believe 245630 is the correct model number. the only place I can find it listed is:-

http://www.modem-help.com/mfcs.php?mid=1&nid=4111

the usr site doesn't list this model, but it has some xx5630-xx listed. I've tried downloading windoze drivers for it to try and set it up in windoze but none of them work.

well, the best i can say is go to http://www.usrobotics.com and see what you can find

thanks for the help, I think its time for a new modem, one that actually works

no prob i have a motorola modemsurfer 56k that works quite nicely