Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[ravensrest]

Has anyone gotten the dial-up Winmodem in the Dell Inspiron 2650 to run under Puppy -- or for that matter, any other Linux system?

BS

[rerwin]

ravensrest,
I don't have an Inspiron, but have messed around with Puppy's modem support, so maybe can help you determine whether it is usable with Puppy or Linux in general. But I need more information.

1. What happens when you boot into Puppy 4.1 and click on the "Connect" icon? If it doesn't say "no modem detected" (or equivalent), then there's your answer. But I assume you have done that and see no modem identified.

2. To be thorough, click on the "dialup modem" button in the Connect window. Then click on the "Probe" button, then on the second "Probe" button that appears. I assume that will not find anything, but am open to surprises.

3. We need to know the chipset powering the modem. The simplest way to find that is to use Windows Device Manager to find the identifying details of the modem. Some do not work at all with linux: USR, Motorola, and others. In one of the tabs for the device, there should be a vendor ID and product ID, which would help, too.

I think that is a good start toward determining whether to pursue it further.
Richard

[ravensrest]

I no longer have Puppy installed on the Inspiron; I reinstalled Win XP so I could access the net via the dial-up connection, which is all that is available to me hereabouts.

When it was installed, I did various tests, and if memory serves, Puppy thought there was a modem but could do nothing with it.

The actual modem that Dell uses is an Actiontek MD560RD V92MDC Modem on Com3.

As an aside, one of the problems with using Puppy, or any Linux to some extent, is that they just don't have the wide support that Windows products do. While I value the positive aspects of Linux and Puppy, I sometimes get discouraged in finding out that almost everything I wish to do other than run the basic computer turns into a research project. Like the old saying, "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember the original objective was to drain the swamp". My swamp was simply to be able to send email via Puppy on a reasonably popular laptop.

BS