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Brian Sammon
Guest
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 Posted:
Sat Dec 04, 2004 7:06 am Post subject:
winmodems vs regular modems - tech details |
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Can anybody point me to some information on the difference between hardware
modems and winmodems?
I'm looking for answer to questions such as:
Which of the tasks performed by the firwmare in a standard modem have to be
performed by the driver with a linux modem?
I've heard that some winmodems do more in hardware than others. Is that
true?
Ideally, someone can point me to an online resource with information on
this, but if noone knows of one, a book recommendation would be useful. |
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Franc Zabkar
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Dec 05, 2004 2:35 am Post subject:
Re: winmodems vs regular modems - tech details |
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On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:06:57 -0500, Brian Sammon
<usenet@brisammon.fastmail.fm> put finger to keyboard and composed:
| Quote: | Can anybody point me to some information on the difference between hardware
modems and winmodems?
I'm looking for answer to questions such as:
Which of the tasks performed by the firwmare in a standard modem have to be
performed by the driver with a linux modem?
I've heard that some winmodems do more in hardware than others. Is that
true?
Ideally, someone can point me to an online resource with information on
this, but if noone knows of one, a book recommendation would be useful.
|
I don't recall ever finding a single complete reference source, but
Smart Link once had a white paper on soft modems. Over the years I've
accumulated various snippets of information from a variety of sources.
My basic understanding of the differences is as follows:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=5b6up0lcp8rrti9s4niatmtfubtqk0nrkm%404ax.com&output=gplain
- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email. |
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Moe Trin
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:45 am Post subject:
Re: winmodems vs regular modems - tech details |
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In article <1ni782-a09.ln1@brians.username.cs.cmu.edu>, Brian Sammon wrote:
| Quote: | Can anybody point me to some information on the difference between hardware
modems and winmodems?
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Have you looked at the Linux Documentation Project? The Modem-HOWTO is
going to answer most of this.
| Quote: | I'm looking for answer to questions such as:
Which of the tasks performed by the firwmare in a standard modem have to be
performed by the driver with a linux modem?
|
All of them - but that's a function of the "driver", not something that
ordinarily concerns a user. As an interesting comparison, the loosemodems
often have a hardware requirement of (at the very least) a Pentium 166.
I have seen a real 56k hardware modem (USR 5687-00) run by a terminal
program, and downloading a gziped tarball at 5300 BYTES/sec on a genuine
IBM PC-XT with a 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU running Minux. Now, if you ignore that
fact that the 8088 can't address enough memory to install windoze 3.1
(never mind the more recent bloated O/S), there must be some extra CPU
cycles needed to run _any_ loosemodem. This is why the home firewall is
using a real hardware modem - it's only a 386SX-16 with 8 Megs of RAM.
| Quote: | I've heard that some winmodems do more in hardware than others. Is that
true?
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Yes
| Quote: | Ideally, someone can point me to an online resource with information on
this, but if noone knows of one, a book recommendation would be useful.
|
You're posting from CMU, haven't you looked in the bookstore? Whatever.
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html
35337 Jul 22 2002 ACP-Modem
48060 Mar 13 2002 Conexant+Rockwell-modem-HOWTO
46213 Feb 25 2001 Linmodem-HOWTO
327449 Nov 16 16:36 Modem-HOWTO
66640 Dec 4 2002 PCTel-MicroModem-Config
12950 Apr 29 2001 Winmodems-and-Linux-HOWTO
http://start.at/modem/
And yes, those are current file dates. The Modem-HOWTO is quite detailed,
and the Conexant+Rockwell-modem-HOWTO discusses the different pieces of
crap that the manufacturers are sluffing off on the sheep.
The 'start.at/modem/' web page is Rob Clark's old Winmodem web page - which
used to be _the primary_ source of information for Linux users. It's still
a valuable resource with a number of interesting links.
Old guy |
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Brian Sammon
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Dec 05, 2004 10:33 am Post subject:
Re: winmodems vs regular modems - tech details |
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In article <1ni782-a09.ln1@brians.username.cs.cmu.edu>,
Brian Sammon <usenet@brisammon.fastmail.fm> writes:
| Quote: | Can anybody point me to some information on the difference between hardware
modems and winmodems?
I'm looking for answer to questions such as:
Which of the tasks performed by the firwmare in a standard modem have to be
performed by the driver with a linux modem?
|
Dang... that was supposed to be
"performed by the driver with a _winmodem_"
I didn't mean to give the impression I was asking a question about linux.
| Quote: | I've heard that some winmodems do more in hardware than others. Is that
true?
Ideally, someone can point me to an online resource with information on
this, but if noone knows of one, a book recommendation would be useful. |
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Moe Trin
Guest
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| Posted:
Tue Dec 07, 2004 6:21 am Post subject:
Re: winmodems vs regular modems - tech details |
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In article <d5ja82-kn.ln1@brians.username.cs.cmu.edu>, Brian Sammon wrote:
| Quote: | In article <1ni782-a09.ln1@brians.username.cs.cmu.edu>,
Brian Sammon <usenet@brisammon.fastmail.fm> writes:
Which of the tasks performed by the firwmare in a standard modem have to be
performed by the driver with a linux modem?
Dang... that was supposed to be
"performed by the driver with a _winmodem_"
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Doesn't matter. The loosemodem still needs the driver (different for each
operating system, but a driver none the less) to emulate in software those
missing bits of hardware.
| Quote: | I didn't mean to give the impression I was asking a question about linux.
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Not a problem - the answers remain the same. The Linux-HOWTOs not only
tell you how to do things in Linux, but also explain what's happening.
The Modem-HOWTO is a very good example, while the
Conexant+Rockwell-modem-HOWTO gives a good explanation of the differences
between the merely comatose and the totally brain dead loosemodems. The
start.at/modem/ web page still has good links, and lots of details.
Old guy |
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