Winmodem works (with binary driver)

[Stefan Bruda]

Hi all.

I discovered a binary driver that drives my winmodem (on a tibook rev
III) just fine.  I have no means to test it on other machines
featuring such a horror (a winmodem I mean) but the package
maintainers claim that the driver does support other Apple hardware as
well:

   "[...] the hcfusbmodem driver [...] supports the Cadmus2
    chipset internally used by Apple in later generation PowerPC
    desktop and notebook machines."

In fact, I have also sent a howto proposal to the YDL
guys in this respect, but it seems like the howto page is frozen or
something as I got no response whatsoever (by the way, anybody knows
what happens with that page?).

Anyway, in a nutshell the package is at:

    http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/index.html

Then click on the link "Download" under the "HCF (controllerless)
driver" heading, agree to the license, and you will face a page with
many downloads, but only one for PPC machines.  At the time I
downloaded it, the tarball was called
"hcfusbmodem-0.98mbsibeta02090200ppc.tar.gz."

Notice however that the thing works with benh kernels, but it may not
work with others--there is a notice in this respect in the README
file, do read it if you use other kernel.  Otherwise, installing is
trivial, just follow the instructions.  The result is that the modem
is viewed as a USB modem (/dev/ttySHCFUSB0 or something, but you don't
need to remember the device: /dev/modem is also symlinked to it in an
uneventful installation, and wvdial detects the modem without any
external intervention).

There are two problems after installation (on my machine at least):
For one thing, no matter what I do, the modem is completely silent,
including the connection phase.  This is a bit unusual for me, but not
a real problem.

Then, the modem does not appear to detect the dial tone.  I could not
make this work either, so I instructed it instead to ignore the tone
altogether. This is accomplished by passing to the modem the init
string ATX3.

I have tried to use wvdial and kppp with my new modem driver, and
wvdial worked like a charm (after running `wvdialconf
/etc/wvdial.conf' then adding ATX3 as an extra init string and of
course the coordinates of my dialup account).  I could not make kppp
work, because I could not figure out how to pass extra init strings to
the modem (otherwise, the modem is detected allright in kppp, so if
anybody knows how to handle the init strings everything should be OK).

Stefan

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass