DSL not recognizing the modem...what else is new?
in [Setup]
|
Prev: Did Debian's text console font change recently? How to get theold one back? -- It was Nouveau in Kernel 2.6.32-5!
Next: Fedora 13: Need help setting up dual monitors.
From: Nico Kadel-Garcia on 7 Jun 2010 08:03 On Jun 5, 8:19 pm, RayLopez99 <raylope...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Well, I just checked to see if the modem works. It was working (years > ago) under Windows 2000 on this old Pentium II with limited RAM. > > I configured the modem using the Damn Small Linux Control Panel, using > the standard defaults (PPP for example, etc). I'm not an expert on > dialup modem settings--feel free to tell me what to do if you are--but > using the defaults it should have worked. OK, this is classic Lopez-ism. You've layered constraint on constraint on constraint: ancient laptop box (if you're still working with that same pre-2000 laptop), limited and stripped down Linux distribution in order to fit on the box, ancient telephone modem. This is wasting your time. Consider replacing that box. If you want to play with oddball hardware combinations, insisting on doing it with Damn Small Linux is problematic. Old modems don't have "defaults". They're strange enough in their violations of the varous modem standards, especially Class 2 and Class 2.0 features, that they can require considerable reverse engineering > I had four choices for modem port: ttys0 to s3, corresponding to COM1 > to COM4. The tragic part was after I configured on COM port (it's not By the way, these are somewhat misleading to modem newbies. COM1 and COM3 are actually driven by the same IRQ. COM2 and COM4 are driven by the same IRQ. So if you ever reconfigure modems, or install another one, you can't use more than 2 without some kind of adapter to handle them by other means than IRQ's. Linux is faced with the same hardware limitation. > a good sign that under "auto recognize" the Control Panel module could > not detect a modem), the Linux OS "locked" the modem apparently, so > trying other COM ports gave the message ("Device ttys1 [COM2, the > first port I tried] is locked by pid1044]. What is a pid? It's a "process ID". the number of the actual process using that port. Depending on the software, this number may be written to a file to allow other programs to look it up and kill the process to claim a lock, which is what good modem software usually does. This is because modem software varies, a *lot*, and the standards for handling it are thus very old and date back to pretty ancient forms of UNIX, and this was a reliable way for it to work on all of them. > Some > software process that locked something. How do you kill the process? Depends on the process. If you use a command like "ps auxwww | grep 1044", you should get some information about it. But if your modem configuration tool has placed an entry in /etc/inittab associated with that modem device, it's going to get restarted automatically. > Read the man page, I know, I know. I guess I'd have to reboot to try > the other ports. But to be honest, I think either the modem died > while the system was in mothballs, or DSL's control panel does not > have the right parameters--though it said "these parameters [the > default] work for Windows 95" so I assume the programmer had some > background on the typical defaults. Or the vendor published their specifications to the manufacturer, which you don't seem to have. > To be continued...I wonder if I can pick up a modem card somewhere for > cheap...I'll ask the local computer guy...since it could be the > hardware died while in storage, but that doesn't make much sense > either. If you're still on that ancient laptop, stop. Seriously, it's expensive in time to do that, and you're much better moving to something built this decade. PCMCIA cards for modems are pretty cheap, $20 or so in a swapfest or computer recycling shop, but you're burning time unnecessarily. If you have to do this, I've actually had decent success with modest USB/modem devices, which can then be swapped around to other projects. Just beware that IRQ issue. And they take a relatively recent Linux to work reliably, because the specifications had to be reverse engineered for them. > Linux is...pain-ware. The pain, the pain! But all the "fun" is in > the installation I hear you hobbyists say! Linux is being painware for you because you're taking bits of things that might work with some difficulty, and stringing them together, and expecting them to be seamless. That was never the case with *any* OS. I well remember tangling with the Win95 modem drivers on laptops, and it wasn't a pretty sight. > > RL
From: The Natural Philosopher on 7 Jun 2010 08:05 Pascal Hambourg wrote: > > > Nota : you really need to understand all this networking stuff (what's a > modem, a switch, a router, how does it work...) before you start setting > up anything. Sadly Ray, despite being a 'power user of Windows', hasn't a clue about anything. Nor does he wish to learn - he feels it is the job of the OS implementers and vendors to remove this from his list of things to be learned. So he spends his time bemoaning the fact that Linux wont take the same attitude. Rather than attempting to learn anything. He is the reason that Apple is so successful, and because he is a cheapskate, also the reason why Windows will never completely disappear from the desktop PC. Chequebook solutions and moaning is his only problem solving tool.
From: Nico Kadel-Garcia on 7 Jun 2010 08:08 On Jun 7, 6:31 am, The Natural Philosopher <t...(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: > RayLopez99 wrote: > > On Jun 7, 9:40 am, Nigel Feltham <nigel.felt...(a)btinternet.com> wrote: > >> Peter wrote: > >>> In article <6f185f76-27a3-4db0-8c21- > >>> 106dd69b7...(a)j8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>, raylope...(a)gmail.com says.... > >>>> Stupid question #2: if I go with the D-Link, I just power it up, plug > >>>> the speedtouch DSL modem into the "WAN" port as input, then ethernet > >>>> cables from two of the four other ports to my two PCs' ethernet card > >>>> ports, right? Then on bootup the PCs should both recognize the DSL > >>>> modem, right? And both can independently surf the internet via the > >>>> same DLS modem right? (with a performance penalty I assume for sharing > >>>> the same bandwidth of course). > >>> No, the router would replace the modem and connect directly to the phone > >>> line. > >> Not in this case as from the description it sounds like he has a cable modem > >> (ADSL modems have phone connection labelled 'Line', cable modems have 'WAN' > >> ports) which does need a separate ADSL modem/router connected to the WAN > >> port to work this way (not forgetting to configure the router for > >> user/password and other connection settings). > > > Interesting observation. The D-Link router was given free by > > somebody--I did not buy it--and there's a chance that it's a cable > > modem router rather than ADSL router? In any event--at the moment-- > > it's a moot point since my one PC is running fine using the old ADSL > > Speedtouch router with the AsusTech switch. Now I will go buy a > > Ethernet card for the DamnSmallLinux Pentium II and see if it can > > reach the internet. > > Not much of a power user are you? > > Cant tell the difference between dial up and ADSL or cable and ADSL..or > probably a router, modem or a combination of the above. > > Its luck for you that Windows was made for idiots. > > Stick to it. > > Its right up your street. That part is not entirely Mr. Lopez's fault. The mishandling of the word "modem" for both DSL and ISDN and ordinary telephone modems, and the mislabeling of what are ADSL *GATEWAYS* as switches and routers, has led to some nightmarish confusion for anyone trying to sort out help requests..
From: Mike Easter on 7 Jun 2010 10:05 RayLopez99 wrote: > Next I got an Ethernet card for the > Pentium I/II machine, with limited RAM (let's not revisit that theme-- We really do need to visit that theme adequately for the first time, which you never have. If you have 4 sticks of ram, when the BIOS POSTs, if you are watching carefully, you should see evidence of all 4 slots having ram, such as 0 1 2 3, not 0 2 3 or 0 1 2 or 1 2 3 I would be very surprised if you had 4 sticks of ram totaling about 48 meg which would be something like 2 8 meg sticks and 2 16 meg sticks. Did this machine originally come with W2K or did it originally come with something like Win 3.1 or Win95? More likely one or more of your ramsticks need to be reseated in their slots. > I saw, when I took the top off, 4 sticks of RAM but I could not get > model numbers off them...in any rate, as you have said, the BIOS is > reporting only 46.85 RAM and even DamnSmallLinux (D.S.L.) is reporting > the same, with 36M "used" and 10.8 MB "free"). I see. -- Mike Easter cosl only
From: The Natural Philosopher on 7 Jun 2010 10:41
Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote: > On Jun 7, 6:31 am, The Natural Philosopher <t...(a)invalid.invalid> > wrote: >> RayLopez99 wrote: >>> On Jun 7, 9:40 am, Nigel Feltham <nigel.felt...(a)btinternet.com> wrote: >>>> Peter wrote: >>>>> In article <6f185f76-27a3-4db0-8c21- >>>>> 106dd69b7...(a)j8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>, raylope...(a)gmail.com says... >>>>>> Stupid question #2: if I go with the D-Link, I just power it up, plug >>>>>> the speedtouch DSL modem into the "WAN" port as input, then ethernet >>>>>> cables from two of the four other ports to my two PCs' ethernet card >>>>>> ports, right? Then on bootup the PCs should both recognize the DSL >>>>>> modem, right? And both can independently surf the internet via the >>>>>> same DLS modem right? (with a performance penalty I assume for sharing >>>>>> the same bandwidth of course). >>>>> No, the router would replace the modem and connect directly to the phone >>>>> line. >>>> Not in this case as from the description it sounds like he has a cable modem >>>> (ADSL modems have phone connection labelled 'Line', cable modems have 'WAN' >>>> ports) which does need a separate ADSL modem/router connected to the WAN >>>> port to work this way (not forgetting to configure the router for >>>> user/password and other connection settings). >>> Interesting observation. The D-Link router was given free by >>> somebody--I did not buy it--and there's a chance that it's a cable >>> modem router rather than ADSL router? In any event--at the moment-- >>> it's a moot point since my one PC is running fine using the old ADSL >>> Speedtouch router with the AsusTech switch. Now I will go buy a >>> Ethernet card for the DamnSmallLinux Pentium II and see if it can >>> reach the internet. >> Not much of a power user are you? >> >> Cant tell the difference between dial up and ADSL or cable and ADSL..or >> probably a router, modem or a combination of the above. >> >> Its luck for you that Windows was made for idiots. >> >> Stick to it. >> >> Its right up your street. > > That part is not entirely Mr. Lopez's fault. The mishandling of the > word "modem" for both DSL and ISDN and ordinary telephone modems, and > the mislabeling of what are ADSL *GATEWAYS* as switches and routers, > has led to some nightmarish confusion for anyone trying to sort out > help requests.. however no one I know refers to cable or ADSL modems as 'dial up' I still don't know what he purports to have, he talks about DSL which to my knowledge NEVER connected to a serial port, with COM1, etc, which to my knowledge are totally inadequate speedwise to run a cable or DSL modem even if they had compatible interfaces. His best bet would be either us a dial up modem, or a PCMCIA ethernet card and a proper router/modem combo, If anything he says is true.. It is perfectly reasonable BTW to refer to an ADSL interface as a modem. But not as a dial up modem. |