[ale] Share my frustration: what do you do for fax/data modems?

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Tue, June 13 2006 15:38, Byron A Jeff wrote:
>
> Over the years I've purchased external modems via Ebay and surplus with
> no good results. I'd really hate to have to spend nearly $50 just to get
> an external modem that works.
>
> So I'm looking for ideas. As you can well guess my preference is to have
> a modem with a controller that functions standalone without additional
> driver software. I hope to get 56K dialup and fax functionality.
>
> I figure I'm just looking in the wrong places. So I'm asking for advise.
>

As it so happens, if you use Sprint PCS, and have a Samsung A920-MM phone, 
you can plug that into your computer and use that for a modem.  Don't know 
if it supports FAX, but it does support being a modem over the cellular 
network.  The only problem with that is that I think (don't yet know for 
sure) that Sprint charges extra for the data calls.  Also, answering is a 
bit of a problem -- sending ATA to the phone picks the call up in voice 
mode, as opposed to answering with the modem component.  It is also slower 
then molasses in Antarctica at its coldest point in the year -- feels like 
somewhere between 300bps - 600bps throughput, probably because it is 
cellular and the phone wasn't designed to make analog data phone calls so 
much as use the 3G network that Sprint has.

However, it was an interesting experiment the other night when our Comcast 
was out.  :)

Anyway, there are also some softmodems that are supported.  The one built-in 
to my laptop is:

lspci:
0000:00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) 
AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)

lsmod:
snd_atiixp_modem       16136  0

ps axu:
root      4116  0.0  0.7   3700  3716 ?        SLs  04:05   
0:00 /usr/sbin/slmodemd --alsa -c USA modem:1

Creates a new modem device /dev/ttySL0 and I can use that for dialing up to 
places, though I am again not sure about FAX.  I can't really test it all 
that much since it won't even manage to get a CONNECT over a VoIP 
line.  :-P

	- Mike
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