Originally Posted by rtmistler

Given that you had collected this data over years, it would seem surprising that you hadn't kept backups on other forms of media. Also noting that "collected OS's" would be the very type of thing which you would keep on a secondary drive or media storage since you'd need a clean install disk to re-install the OS should it suffer some sort of problem where it was non-recoverable.

Regarding your original topic and where you're going with a serial modem, why not use the AT command set directly and write some custom software to do this. You also can just use minicom or any other serial communications terminal for Linux where you can send and receive the ASCII AT commands directly. Minicom is ideally suited for this, take the time to check the settings. With the obvious expertise you're demonstrating here, it should be very simple for you to contend with that modem's command set, and as you likely also know, that would be far better than relying on a software package to do this for you, plus also likely, more secure.