This was written for Mandrake-10 using the SmartLink 5634PCV SurfRider, but it should be broad enough to adapt to many other winmodems, as long as they have a controller chip. Remember that your irq's may change whenever you add/remove hardware, or change your BIOS settings.

1. From the installation disks, install setserial and kppp.
2. Determine your modem type, irq number and I/O address with the following command:

cat /proc/pci or lspci -v

For my machine, this yields:
00:09.0 Communication controller: TOPIC SEMICONDUCTOR Corp TP560 Data/Fax/Voice 56k modem
Subsystem: TOPIC SEMICONDUCTOR Corp TP560 Data/Fax/Voice 56k modem
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 19
I/O ports at d800 [size=8]

Now I know that I am going to use ttyS2, that my irq is 19 and my I/O address is 0xd800.

3. You need to know the major and minor numbers for your serial ports. From the Serial HOWTO:
/dev/ttyS0 major 4, minor 64 (DOS COM1)
/dev/ttyS1 major 4, minor 65 (DOS COM2)
/dev/ttyS2 major 4, minor 66 (DOS COM3)
/dev/ttyS3 major 4, minor 67 (DOS COM4)
/dev/ttyS4 major 4, minor 68 (DOS COM5)

4. Now, you need to cd to /dev and create your device.
#COM3
mknod -m 666 /dev/ttyS2 c 4 66
#COM5
mknod -m 666 /dev/ttyS4 c 4 68
etc.

5. Now cd to /etc/rc.d and write rc.serial:
vi rc.serial

#! /bin/sh
# rc.serial
rm -f /dev/modem
setserial /dev/ttyS2 uart 16550A irq 19 port 0xd800
ln -s /dev/ttyS2 /dev/modem
echo "Modem Ready

-> : -> wq to write and exit vi

6. chmod 755 rc.serial to make it executable.
7. cd up to /etc and type:
ln -s rc.d/rc.serial
to create a link in /etc to /etc/rc.d/rc.serial

8. Now you can reboot, or type /etc/rc.serial to execute the script.

Depending on your modem, this may or may not work. Most winmodems don't have their own controller chips, so they won't work under Linux without drivers. Lucent (LT) and some other companies supply a limited set of drivers, but it is the exception, rather than the rule. Nearly any external modem will work though.

Michael

RLU #352695
35.14N - 101.50W

http://www.linmodems.org/