Question about WinModems
 

I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 on an old AMD Duron white box. When I look at System/Preferences/Hardware, it shows my internal modem as an Agere Systems PCI 56k WinModem. I always thought WinModems were modems built directly into the Mobo rather than added onto a PCI or AGP slot. What does it take to use this modem instead of the serial modem I'm currently using? Thanks.

The miracle of Plug&Play, each device is digitally "stamped" with identifying information.
Even built-in stuff needs to be connected to a bus (PCI, AGP, etc...). Slots are an alternative to permanently soldering a device to the board. WinModems are just cheap transmitters. The signal processing is offloaded to software to cut manufacturing costs. This software is generally only available for Windows, hence the name WinModem.
Last I checked, a masochistic personality. Unless you have one of the few WinModems that either have good reverse engineered open source drivers or have vendor support, it will be a futile effort. Even with drivers it might be more trouble than its worth. I eventually gave up on my WinModem when I got DSL. I would just stick with your external modem. Even if your external modem is slower than your WinModem, 100% hardware modems are generally easier to use and more reliable. And on the subject of DSL, if its available in your area, it might be more cost effective to switch to broadband already.

You could also look here: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/index.html.

Edit: See next post also.

I ran into this same question a few years ago when I lived in a Dial-up only area. I too had a Winmodem and after alot of research and experimenting, I did manage to get my modem up and running. This was the site which helped the most, http://linmodems.org/. Hope this helps.

Unless you have a different model than I ran across in my modem history an Agere modem is almost impossible to get to work. As mentioned above if your M/B has a serial plug get an external serial modem. I am not sure if they still make them but you can still buy internal pci hardware modems. They are a little more expensive but well worth it. The best suggestion is that if there is any feasible way is go broad band with a router.

There also once was (ca. 2 yrs. ago) a wireless router w/ a built-in dial-up modem controlled through a web interface from a connected computer. It also had 2 ethernet LAN ports.

If you're interested, I can try to find out the make & model. (Cost was about $80.)

Edit: It made sharing easy, but slow; & provided all the protection of a NAT'ing router.

True. That is stamped into the motherboard or plugged into a pci slot makes no difference. They both will share the same pci buss ultimately.

What makes a difference is that, usually, external modems, unlike MOST internal ones, are true modems. Hardware modems. As you said, winmodems are not real modems, they are just placeholders where you can plug a cable. All the modem functions are done at cpu level (and that's why most/all of them require mmx to work and will not work in anything below a pentium mmx).

My advice is to use a true modem. You can still search around and congratulate yourself if you get it to work without problems. I had to use one hsfmodem from with a driver from linuxant, which by the way, was a payed driver. The free version only allowed transfer rates up to 10 kb/s or so, and anyway, the modem used to disconnect itself every two minutes or so. A real shame for a payed product I must say.