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    Good dial-up modem for Linux

    Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by nite owl, Nov 30, 2006.

  1. nite owl

    nite owl Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi im running Ubuntu 6.06 and I was wondering if anyone could tell me of a relativley cheap dial-up 56k modem that connects to the comps USB port and runs excellently on Linux?????since my modem cant. Any suggestions would be great.
     
    nite owl, Nov 30, 2006
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  2. BigV

    BigV Notebook Deity

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    BigV, Nov 30, 2006
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  3. Ditig

    Ditig Notebook Geek

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    By the way, most USB modems are softmodems (not real modems). Keep that in mind so you have to make sure that there are Linux drivers for your modem before buying.
     
    Ditig, Dec 2, 2006
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  4. ism

    ism Newbie

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    I may be wrong, as I haven't played with dial up for a few years now, but back when I was just learning to use linux, I found that anything that attached it's happy little self to a usb port was external...and pretty much anything external had hardware controllers in them that made them not soft/winmodems...I guess I could be wrong, though? Honestly though, every external modem I ever connected to a linux machine was auto detected, or the drivers were easily downloadable...

    ...that used to be the real catch, though..."how do I download the drivers when I can't get online??" Heh...helps with dual booting in the long run. :)
     
    ism, Dec 4, 2006
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  5. Ditig

    Ditig Notebook Geek

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    Modems attached to the serial port have everything in hardware and are 100% compatible with linux. With USB modems and USB WLANs, it's different. You have to check to see if someone's written a driver to simulate some of the components. If you want to make sure 100% that something is really hardware, look at the packaging and the system requirements. If you find it telling you something like 233 MHz needed, 64 MB RAM, etc., then it's a 'soft-modem' aka 'not a real modem'. A real modem should function just fine on a 12 MHz PC from the 80s. A USB modem wouldn't.
     
    Ditig, Dec 5, 2006
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  6. ism

    ism Newbie

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    Heh, nifty, thanks for the information. I must've been lucky with the USB modems I've gotten in the past. I hope your information pops into my head if and when I ever need to buy another external modem.
     
    ism, Dec 5, 2006
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