Pigeon,
Thanks for your input. My answers are below:
I've been experimenting wth changing settings in serial.conf but
have had no luck. Though dmesg says that a modem is found at ttys00
with an irq of 4 setting that in serial.conf results in a hanging
modem. I keep having to set it to ttys0 with irq of 3.
...which is a little puzzling, because irq 4 is the standard for
ttyS0. What does 'setserial /dev/ttyS0' report?
Oddly enough: "input/output error", though modem does work with these
settings. And they're the only settings that have ever worked. If I do
setserial start I get:
"loading saved state of the serial devices.
/dev/ttys0 at 0xcff0 (irq =3) is a 16550a".
What you set in serial.conf should follow what the BIOS setup has been
configured to; ie. you configure the BIOS setup, and then change
serial.conf to correspond with it (if the kernel hasn't figured it out
automatically).
And, your modem really is on ttyS0 (COM1)? Do you have a serial mouse?
Not sure what type. It's a Logitech PS2 with /dev/mouse pointing to
/dev/psaux.
Does the output from 'cat /proc/interrupts' change according to
whether ppp is or isn't running?
When ppp is not running IRQ 3 disappears from the /proc/interrupts
results. If I then use ifconfig to bring ethernet up eth0 appears as
IRQ3.
Originally this was a dual boot Debian and Windows 2000 pc. I rarely
used the Windows portion but did get some of the hardware settings
from it. Since then a service pack has utterly destroyed Windows so
I'm not able to boot or do anything other than mount the file system
from Debian and poke around. But I don't imagine any of the hardware
settings have changed. What I have from there is many settings for
IRQ9, inlcuding both ethernet card and modem. I vaguely recall going
through a lot of experimenting in order to find the correct IRQs,
rather than 9, when I first set pc up with Debian over 3 years ago.
But since I didn't have a network then I didn't really bother with
trying to get the ethernet card to work.
I'm really unclear about how to change anything in the bios setup.
Can you give me any idea as to how to try that?
It's hard to be specific because this varies according to what BIOS
you have and how old it is. Basically, at the start of the boot
process - the bit where it does the memory test - you get the chance
to press a magic key, often DEL or F2 but unfortunately there are
plenty of other ones used by different BIOSes, which brings up a set
of menus; somewhere under this there are usually options for
configuring the serial (and parallel) ports, which allow you to
specify what address and IRQ they are to use. You then press another
magic key, usually F10, to save your changes and reboot. The best way
to find specific information is to try and download the manual for
your motherboard from the manufacturer's website; if you can't find it
there, google for it.
I'll see what I can do with finding the bios. I vaguely recalled F10
as getting BIOS settings but that didn't work. I'll try some others
and see what happens.
Thanks so much for you input on all of this.
Ken