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Re: Lenovo T410 modem difficulties



On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:21:44 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Jun 2011, Camaleón wrote:

>> > You will have to buy a driver from Linuxant if you want that thing to
>> > work.
>> 
>> Why? Is the free version of their software not working at all? :-?
> 
> Can you actually use 14k4 for anything?  If you need the modem, you
> likely need the full support.

I'd say that depends. Having a modem that works at a speed of 14.400 bps 
can have its uses, for instance, sending (or receiving) a sporadic fax or 
to send teleguard warnings.

Of course, if your main goal is browsing YouTube or having an "always on" 
connection, you better get a UMTS modem.

> Yes, the "free beer" version works.  But it is NOT worth the hassle of
> installing or loading that driver as a "just have" IMO.  Do it only if
> you _need_ it, and if you need it, get the full version to at least pay
> something back to linuxant for the driver developement and encourage
> them to keep maintaining it so that it will still work on later kernels.

Yes, that's also my understanding.

Moreover, if I needed a dial-up link on the notebook, I would go for an 
external modem without any doubt, but sometimes there is no other 
choice :-(

>> I thougth softmodems were really bad but Conexant chipset based ones at
>> least provide two sets of drivers... are you saying nooone work?
> 
> Both worked last time I tried them in a T43, and 2.6.26 kernel.  I have
> not bothered to recompile it and check against 2.6.32 and 2.6.35, and I
> have no idea if it even know how to deal with 3.0.

Ah, good.

>> >> Or better yet, get a real modem >:-)
>> > 
>> > That would be either a cdc-acm USB device, which can be rather
>> > difficult to find... or a USB RS232 dongle plus an async RS232 modem
>> > (large and somewhat expensive).
>> 
>> Uh? A plain USB or a PCMCIA/Smart PC card (being both hardware based
>> modems) will do the job quite well. Anything is better than an embedded
>> modem.
> 
> Plain USB has to be cdc-acm (full serial device) to work in Linux.
> Finding them is not that easy in some parts of the world, and most are
> not produced anymore.  The smartcard ones are even worse.  YMMV.

Yes, I know. But there are companies (Zoom or USRobotics) that still make 
that kind of modems and they work with Linux.

Some links:

http://www.zoomtel.com/products/dial_up_external_usb.html
http://www.zoomtel.com/products/dial_up_pc_card.html
http://www.usr.com/products/modem/modem-product.asp?type=specs&sku=USR5637

And those came from well-know companies, there should be another unknown 
modems that are also working with Linux. It requires a bit of digging but 
sure there are.

> The T43 embedded modem with full (paid) linuxant drivers used to work
> well, as long as I never tried to suspend (those drivers are NOT even
> close to perfect).  I haven't needed the modem for two years now, so I
> didn't bother testing the driver in recent kernels.

Good to know. At least there is a driver that makes the device to work.  
My Toshiba Tecra A7 also integrates a dial-up modem that is not even 
detected by the kernel (which I don't need it but it should be nice to 
have such option, you never know...) ;-(

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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