On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, D-Man wrote: > On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 02:49:43AM -0700, Sidney Brooks wrote: > | For those of you who tried to help with my problem, several weeks > | ago, here is a statement of the problem and solution. > > | After following all suggestions offered here and consulting with a > | computer technician, the conclusion was that it had to be the modem. > | I bought a new Diamond modem and both versions of linux now get me > | online. Our guess is that I had a line surge that knocked out a part > | of the modem that linux requires, but that Windows can do without. > > It is always good to find a solution :-). > > | I still have two minor problems that I may be able to work out myself. In > | order to get on line with Debian, I must use ppp. Minicom and wvdial > | connect but fail to authenticate. > > As Wayne mentioned, minicom and wvdial aren't supposed to authenticate > or maintain a ppp connection, that is pppd's job :-). minicom is an > _interactive_ dialer.
Minicom is a "terminal program" or "comm program"... as in dial up over a serial line, login, use your shell account. > It is only inteneded to dial the modem, no > more, no less. No, it is intended as a comm program. > Also, because it is interactive, it is only really > useful when determining what the dialog with the ISP should be, and > then it is essential. It is interactive because a comm program would be useless if it was not. <...> > I used minicom to see what my ISP sends and what it expects. With the > knowledge of these "expect-send" pairs I set up a chat script (chat > controls the modem and is driven by a set of expect-send strings in a > config file) and use 'pon' to dial. Sounds like a good use of minicom if you don't have serial access to a box. <...> > Minicom is a great tool for determining how your ISP > handles an incoming call, then after that it isn't really useful > because (AFAIK) it isn't scriptable. Yes it is, but if you don't have a dialup shell account the feature is kinda useless (it simulates keypresses), eh. Youngsters! What is this world coming to, never heard of a comm prg, probably don't know what x/y/zmodem and kermit are either. ;) just for the fun of it... I can dial in and read my mail/surf-the-web using a C64 and a comm program, and if my ZX81 was still working I could hook up a home-built low-speed modem I built many years ago and use it. Maybe I'll go have a nap now, I'm feeling old all of a sudden. :) - Bruce
