My modem is working now

The modem is alive. It is working now. I am posting this from my Linux box. I feel so happy now as I have spent quite a number of days to configure my modem. To search for the latest modem driver is not a hard job but configure it to make work is a hard job. Right until now, the modem still haven't correctly configure. Every time I turn on my Linux I still need to configure it in order to get online. By the time I configure the modem, it fails for the first time when I try to connect to the Internet.

An error message prompt timeout expired while waiting for the PPP interface to come up. This is so annoying for me to click on the OK button every time I connect to the Internet. This is annoying too every time I need to configure my modem after Linux was bootup.

Things going to solve soon. I need some configuration setting to make my modem “permanently” stay in my Linux.

Tools to detect my modem

I have downloaded a tool called Scanmodem from linmodem support page while I get into this HOWTO slmodem for Gentoo. I know this site is definitely for Gentoo Linux, but I was running out of hope to install my modem. There are so limited resources out there. I must give try on whatever I found.

This tool can help you to detect your modem device, the files needed to compile your modem and many more. It was a very good tool. To use it, follow this simple steps:

gunzip Scanmodem.gz
chmod U+X Scanmodem
./scanModem

- gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_slmodem

This will create a ModemData.txt under a Modem directory (there are many more files generated). So I open up the file and I see a lot of info which I couldn’t understand. The very interesting part to me is this:

PCI ID: 2000:2800
Subsystem ID: 122d:2800

…
…

Candidate modem in PCI bus: 00:0c.0
Class 0703: 200:2800
Primary PCI_id: 2000:2800
Type needed: slamr

After reading this, so called spec, I become blur and struggle. It seems helpless on Internet after a few weeks of searching and googling. The only hope is to go back read carefully the README from the package. This is the only hope I think.

One thing for sure is my modem chipset is SL2800.

First try on installing a modem on Mandriva 2007

Few months ago, when starting to setup my Linux box on my machine, the primary installation before development tools is the modem driver and display driver. The first driver I was trying to install is the modem driver. This driver is come together with the hardware. Unlike the display driver, this free me some hassle work in searching for the driver.

I am surprising that I am able to see the driver source code after I have extract the zip file. (I am new to the Linux world.) There is no exe file. I go through the instruction from the README file and following every step to in the setup process. It gives me an error. This is so interesting that the console showing which line is having trouble in which file. Just like a debugger. I follow what have been told by the compiler to see what is inside the code.

Open it. I have no idea on how to fix the code although I am a C++ developer. (Frankly my core skills are UI only.) This is so funny that I can read the C++ code but I have no idea on how this code is work. I put this aside for a few weeks until I manage to find a latest driver. I get the package from here.

It compiled and installed but I have no way to configure it. Did some Google search and I got this thread. This thread did mention about on how to setting up and configuring the modem. It works exactly. Unfortunately the modem is not able to query. Is it my false?

Changing Direction of My Project

I have a bad news. Due to the limited time I have, the project was drop as my initial plan. But something was change; I was planning to make a UI-less utility to make it simpler to develop. I don't need to care the about UI design issues, the feel and look. This project will be changing its development tools from MFC to STL. I was planning to make it executable in both window and Linux OS since I am switch my development environment to Linux.

Currently I was busy in setting up my Linux box on my machine. I have facing some troubleshooting issues during setup. (I am newbie in Linux.) Not the installation of Linux but the driver itself. It is pretty hard to find a driver in Linux. But I enjoy the process.

WHAT is Winmodem

WHAT is Winmodem

These few days working on Linux modem and been struggling in installing the driver. Winmodem and Linmodem are a new term which I see frequently during my searching process. I was curious about these and did a search from the Internet. This is what I got.

"A Winmodem is a software modem designed to work with the Microsoft Windows
operating system. A traditional modem uses hardware to perform its tasks, but
Winmodems perform their key tasks with software. This makes them smaller and
cheaper to produce, but it also means they cannot be easily used on other
operating systems because the driver support requires far more effort to
produce." - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winmodem

Another resource which talks more on this is available from this link.

Disable XGL on MANDRIVA 2007

Well! I got the NVIDIA ready on my PC now. I have two options to turn into 3D mode. One is AIGLX and the other is XGL. What was that actually? Have a quick search at Google, but I still couldn’t find one solution.

First I try on AIGLX; this seems no different with the previous setting which is using the generic driver. Then I try on XGL, the whole desktop was turn into white screen with a black box at the middle (I think that must be the splash screen). I am still able to see the splash box at the initial stage of the loading process just before the window manager was loaded. I still can hear the startup sound but I get a white screen after the window manager was loaded.

Did some search on the forum found out that using XGL on NVIDIA is still buggies. Some will say need to do some hacking stuff. I spent around one week to figure out the way to disable XGL in console.

Here is how I did it. Boot in failsafe mode. Change to root user. The reason for this is to let the ls command to show files in color mode. I have tried this without login in as root user. The ls command doesn’t show files in color mode. Go to the directory etc/sysconfig to look for xgl file. Edit it by using vi command. You will see just one line in that file. Xgl=yes. Change this to Xgl=no. Save and reboot again.

I have found a very good resource for vi command. You can get it from here.