modem troubles

["Martin F. Krafft" <madduck@madduck.net>]

hi all,

i got an external modem, it's working fine on my laptop on ttyS0, but
when i hook it up to a particular desktop machine (486DX2-66), it's
behaving weirdly. i tried using wvdialconf and minicom, knowing that
the modem is at ttyS0.

furthermore, setserial configures it fine:

embryo:/dev# setserial -v /dev/ttyS0
/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4

but wvdialconf fails:

embryo:/dev# wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf 
Scanning your serial ports for a modem.

ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- ATQ0 V1 E1 -- ATQ0 V1 E1 -- nothing.
ttyS<Info>: Inappropriate ioctl for device
Port Scan<*1>: S    S1   S2   S3   

Sorry, no modem was detected!  Is it in use by another program?


nevertheless, both, during the initialization phase of minicom, where
i send ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55 +FCLASS=0 (which is the inint
string that wvdialconf gave me on the laptop), and during the
detection of wvdialconf on the desktop, the SD and RD lights on the
modem flash for half a second or so.

three other lights on the modem are on: MR HS TR

furthermore, i use a RS232 line tester in between, and while the modem
is not in use, all its lights are on:
  green led: TD RD CD
  red led:   RTS CTS DSR DTR

and during an initialization phase, the following change:
  green led: RTS DTR CD
  red led:   TD CTS DSR
  off:       RD


if i echo anything redirected to /dev/ttyS0, the terminal just sits
there as if writing to a pipe that isn't being read from.

and i am doing all this as root, btw.

so i know that the modem works, but i can't get it to work on this
specific machine...

the bios has ttyS0 enabled on 0x3f8 with IRQ 4, and the flashing
lights are telling me that there is something going on...

i bet it has to do with setserial...

how can i fix this?

martin;              (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
  \____ echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:"; net@madduck
-- 
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