XE3 WINMODEM ON RED HAT 9.o

[Massimo Bianchi]

Hi all,
I'm looking forward for a driver for the *!!* internal modem of an XE3 notebook.

I know there was a driver for the RH 8.0 and for previous kernel, but it does not funnction on the new RH 9.0 kernel.

I have tried to force the driver in the kernel, but had no luck, just a freeze and one reboot.

Does any one succedded in get it working ?

Thanks !

[Jerome Henry]

It's of course not supported yet, as being designed for windows.
RH site says :
NOTE: WinModems, host-based, HCF-, HSP-, HSF-, controllerless, host-controlled, and soft modems are NOT supported.

Driver is under development seemingly.
Check
http://www.linmodems.org/
from time to time...
hth
J

[James Roper]

I have an XE3 and I run debian. I did had the driver working with RedHat 7.3 though.

The problem is not your version of RedHat, but your kernel version. When you try to insert the module, you get a lovely array of unresolved labels right? This is because the driver you are using was compiled under a different version of the kernel. Now, apparently there are 3 different drivers out there. I've used two, and I've attached the most stable one. I have no idea what version of the kernel it was compiled in, but that doesn't matter, because I have a script that fixes versions written by Mark Spieth. The instructions on installing the module can be found at

http://walbran.org/sean/linux/linmodem-howto-5.html

Don't worry about the tty.h patch, it seems to be redundent.

If this doesn't work or you are unable to understand some instructions, let me know.

James

[Gerard Leclercq]

Last week, I have installed a winmodem driver on my own PC with redhat 7.3.

I downloadede this driver from www.linuxant.com/drivers.

Installation very simple.

Working very fine.

Gerard

[Andrew Bruce]

Hi,

I can almost guarantee that the software found at http://www.heby.de/ltmodem will work! ;-)

I have an Evo N800c (which, I suspect has exactly the same modem - a Lucent/Agere - as your XE3), and I also have Redhat 9 (originally I had kernel version 2.4.20-8, then I compiled kernel version 2.4.20-9).

On the link above, download the package ltmodem-8.26a9.tar.gz, and compile and install it.

The instructions are a little bit broken, but you should be able to work it out (you need to compile from within the source directory, not the level above as the instructions suggest).

If you still have problems, let me know and I can send you the modules I compiled (bear in mind I compiled them against kernel ...20-9).

Regards

Andy

[Massimo Bianchi]

Hi all,
i Thank you all for the good input, but i'm still in problem.

FACTS:
RED HAT distribution 9.00, kernel: 2.4.20-8
modem (as from lspci):

02:02.0 Communication controller: ESS Technology ES2838/2839 SuperLink Modem (rev 01)


Sorry i didn't put this data before.

The ESS winmodem is a little tricky, and i can't find the driver.

I just find a esscom.o driver, but compiled for previuos versione of the kernel, valid until 2.4.17. After that, the driver won't install, even with fix-program tha changes the tag in the driver (tested and frozed the notebook !)

Unofrtunatly i didn't find the source code...

Thanks,
Massimo

[James Roper]

With the freezing problem after installing the module, I used to often have that problem. Sometimes it would freeze, sometimes it wouldn't. That was when I was using the kernel that came with RedHat 7.3. I then switched to Debian. It seems to almost work fine with the 2.4.20-686 kernel distributed by debian, however it still sometimes freezes when trying to connect, and often freezes when my ISP terminates the connection (but not when I terminate it). However, when I use my own kernel, I get a kernel panic. I'm told that ppp needs to be compiled as a module, this doesn't seem to help. What may help you though is to install the debian kernel (not sure how to do this on a RedHat system, I don't think there are any rpms for it), but note if you have the i830 graphics card, you will not be able to to use the 3D capabilities of it (even with the patch supplied by intel) which makes playing tux racer very slow!!

Anyway, if when connecting using the fixed module it freezes, and several lights are flashing on your laptop, I don't know any easy way around that problem. If however it simply freezes and nothing happens, reboot, cross your fingers and try to reconnect. That's what I used to do when I had RedHat, and it worked, sometimes...

[Hrvoje Habjanic]

Hi!

OK, it IS ESS modem (aka. winmodem)

Yes, there is WORKING driver for kernels COMPILED WITH 2.96.x gcc compiler!!!

And that is (unfortunately) your solution - OR compile your kernel with gcc 2.96 version, OR write to ESS chip manufacturer, and ask them to recompile binary-only driver with newer version of gcc compiler.

There are some tools for converting binary-only driver, BUT eventualy you will
"hit the wall" - it is NOT posible to convert gcc2.96 module to gcc3.2 module.

Hrvoje

[Steven E. Protter]

Oh newly anointed Wizard.

I think you have two choices:

1)Get the driver code and work it into th kernel yourself.

2) Wait for someone else to come up with the changes and does it for you.

I think you can port the source.

Or post it to here and the http://www.redhat.com forums and get someone there do it.

Or post it here, someone might want to play with it. Or both.

Good Luck.

SEP

[James Roper]

Ok, I just found something interesting that has helped me get my modem working.

The ESS modem shares it's hardware with the Maestro 3 sound card. By chance I found that when the maestro3 driver is not in the kernel, the modem driver works _almost_ without any problems. And, it's only a problem when connecting, so once you're connected you can put the sound driver back into the kernel. So, before connecting, as root, run rmmod maestro3, then once connected, modprobe maestro3. This should work fine with most standard distrubutions of linux as usually the maestro3 driver is included as a module, not compiled into the kernel. If you've compiled it into the kernel yourself, you'll have to change that.

James