I would like to know where to start to get some winmodem drivers available to Debian.
I have gotten a few winmodems to work using debian. The drivers are usually non-free, but the inclusion of the sl-modem packages into non-free is a beginning. The first step in getting a winmodem to work is finding out what kind of chipset one has. The is a tool found on linmodems.org called scanModem. It is scripts which (duh!) scans your hardware for modems. Among other things, it matches pci ID with known modem chipset ids. These sometimes conflict, as different types of hardware can share the same ID (AMR modems versus PCI, etc) The script can give a good idea of what drivers to try. It sometimes suggest several drivers. the page: www.linmodems.org The scanmodem script. http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/scanModem.gz I have emailed the maintainer of the script and he seemed excited about releasing this utility to debian. Perhaps he will ask for sponsorship for his package himself. In regards to such a utility, would it be appropriate to package it on it's own or should it be integrated with discover or hotplug? How are the conflicting IDs handled in this case. Are there issues with the hardware drivers being non-free - If some hardware will never be used in a free environment, is it relevant to be able to detect it using a base system? There are at least three other modem chipsets whose drivers I think can be realisticaly packaged for debian. The Lucent chipset - Binary non-free ltmodem packages are already available on linmodems.org. The same person maintains the scanmodem script. According to him, the public is already served by linmodems.org in this case. I think it would just be a better idea to have the packages available on a debian cd set... http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/ltmodem/archive/ http://www.heby.de/ltmodem The PCTel chipset - The Pctel company is not maintaining the driver since it was sold to Conexant and the driver is only available for 2.4 kernels. http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/pctel-linux/pctel-0.9.7-9.tar.gz The Intel chipset. This driver seems to be all source with no precompiled object files. The sl-modem-driver is said to also support intel chipsets as well as the alsa snd_intel8x0m module. http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/Intel/537/intel-537EP-2.60.80.0.tgz http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/Intel/536/intel-536EP-2.56.76.0.tgz Conexant chipsets are supported by proprietary drivers sold by www.linuxant.com. The driver packages downloaded by themselves work at a limited 14.4kps. A code token needs to be purchased and entered into their utility to increase the thoughput to the full 56k. I do not think that these packages should be distributed by debian. But that is my personal opinion. Maybe others would find it useful to have even 14.4kps? I do not know. I am sorry if this is the wrong place to ask these questions, but I guess I am looking for a place to start. Thanks!
