after searching for help on installing my internal modem, i found a post here that said my 536ep modem sucked! so i did what the post said and went out and bought an external modem...nice looking Diamond SupraExpress 56ePRO. i had a hard time getting working under XP because my IR port was interfering, but that's all sorted out.

now i need to install it under gentoo. i can't use kppp to dial because i'm connecting through AOL.

oh yes!! still have the 536ep drivers installed, do i need to get rid of them? if so, how do i do that?

No, the other drivers don't matter. When you next restart your system, I would expect it will detect and configure your modem. The real problem, Linux and AOL. There used to be a program called PengAOL that allowed you to connect to AOL, but AOL killed it. I don't know if it is possible to connect to AOL with Linux. kppp, wvdial, etc, they all follow the same standard ppp setup, AOL's is proprietary. Search google and here for Linux AOL, see if anyone has it working.

RO

when i restarted it didn't detect my modem. but when try testing it w/ kppp using /dev/ttys0 instead of /dev/modem in the setup, sometimes it works and other times it says 'can't initialize' or something to that effect.

as for aol, thanks i found a program called peng, but it's probably the same thing... if it doesn't work... i'll just change my isp (...microsoft wannabes)

ls -l /dev/modem
it probably looks something like
/dev/modem --> /dev/ttyS2

you can change that
rm /dev/modem
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/modem

/dev/modem is just a softlink to the actual tty. Then you can use /dev/modem in kppp.
I don't understand why /dev/ttyS0 would be flaky if you leave it as that option in kppp though.

Good luck with peng.

RO

if i did 'ln -sf /dev/ttyS0 /dev/modem', wouldn't that do the same as...
rm /dev/modem
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/modem ?
before when ls -l /dev/modem and /dev/ttys0 i got
'/dev/modem --> /dev/536ep' and /dev/tts0 --> /dev/modem
now i get '/dev/modem --> /dev/ttyS0' and '/dev/ttys0 --> /dev/modem'
is that right?

also to get the modem working in XP i had to change IRQ's in the bios and Xp, so do i need to set the irq for ttys0 in linux?

If you try to 'change' the softlink you will get 'file already exists'.
The format is
ln -s <target file> <new filename>

You can ignore ttys0, the one that matters is the one with capital S, so
/dev/modem --> /dev/ttyS0
is what you want. As for the IRQ, I have never changed one before.

enter
setserial -bg /dev/ttyS*
to see if the IRQ on /dev/ttyS0 is correct

If it doesn't show the correct IRQ, then you can change it to the desired value with
setserial /dev/ttyS0 irq X
Where X is the new IRQ.

As mentioned though, I have never changed IRQs and don't know if that will create a conflict with your other hardware, so keep track of everything you do.

RO.

Reference...
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Modems/...PCI_Modem.html

ok i did everything said, my port no. and IRQ were right.
but the modem doesn't work.
kppp says 'modem does not respond'
and peng says 'modem not configured'
sometime if i query the modem with kppp it starts and goes through the whole ATI0, ATI1....thing but at end it just says 'modem timed out' after that it goes back to saying 'modem does not respond'

i finally got it working!!! unfortunately peng doesn't work tho' but i've found a new ISP, so i'll sign up w/ them tomorrow.

thanks RolledOat! you've been a big help.

What was the root cause of the problem, for others, and if/when I hit upon it.

RO

well i have an onboard irDA device, which was using Com2, but Com1's IRQ and whenever i changed it(irDA) in the bios from 4 to 3 the modem would work(sortof) until i rebooted and the IRQ would change back to 4 so there was always that IRQ conflict between irDA and Com1. but eventually after about 1/2 an hour of playing with the bios settings managed to totally disable the irDA, which in turn gave me Com2. which is what i'm using now