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LinModems? 219

Posted by CmdrTaco from the strange-beasts-indeed dept.
Polo was the first of several to send us an article over at LinuxWorld about PC-Tel announcing LinModems, eg, software modems that can run under Linux as well. Some interesting comments in there about hardware modems being a "Luxury" item. Kinda amusing.
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LinModems? More

LinModems?

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  • Damnit.. the graphics people learned to offload the 3d graphics generators onto the video cards to make it simply better.

    What would it help to put the software into the OS other than making it more difficult to upgrade if everyone makes a different software or you aren't runing Linux (at all or anymore)?

  • Aren't there patent problems that preclude an open solution?

    I'd certainly expect that 56k modems would have difficulties..perhaps not for slower pre-V34 ones.
  • I have a Zoom PCMCIA modem for my laptop and it works fine with Linux. I found lots of options for non-Winmodem PCMCIA modems for around $100.
  • I don't get this argument about softmodems being cheaper. I would understand if a softmodem cost a system integrator $10 to include, but a hardware modem $30 or so; with large unit counts, that adds up. However, these numbers are hardly ever invoked. Like here, we usually hear about $100 hardware modems and five times cheaper softmodems. Are these wholesale prices or retail now? Because I can get perfectly good hardware modems for $40 or less (even name brand, e.g. Creative Labs, in my experience a decent modem), but haven't found softmodems for much less than that. Looking at the high end, USRobotics WinModems are hardly cheap--you can get several decent brands of hardware modems for considerably less.

    I think the whole argument revolves around the theoretical cheapness of the "soft" approach, which never really materializes. Problem is, you still have to have a substantial amount of hardware even for a softmodem--you really only save the controller chip itself and not much else. At volume prices I doubt a Rockwell chip amounts to more than a few dollars. The only way you can really save is by including the modem on the motherboard, taking advantage of a shared PCB and sundry circuitry. And that's were you usually do find big savings--look at emachines, which I think includes modem functionality on the m/b and where--considering the price--you basically don't pay for the modem.

    Paul Radu
  • Just a couple of corrections... :)

    The extension number is not burned in, it's set in the software PBX. And most of the phone models (the better ones) already have a little two-port hub which gives you the equivalent of a pass-through. The only disadvantage of that is that if your phone loses power your PC ethernet gets cut off. Not a huge deal.

    The compay they acquired is called Selsius. But you're quite right in that security is a huge issue. We've been working closely with the network group and the phone group here to make sure we implement this whole IP phone network as safely as possible. (a task of some size!)

    Oh and the Call Manager (the software that runs the phones) runs only on NT. So as much as would recommend the hardware, the software leaves a lot to be desired.

    Dana
  • If they did that, then somebody would say, "Release the code for the Windows drivers!" We wouldnt want that now would we?
    Closed Source Code=New Clueless User Pays For Useless Support...
    Just my opinion and not meant to go down in the history books as a profound and meaningful statement
  • save money on hardware????
    let's see... $6.00 to $12.00 for the processor..
    they made modems with the "processor" in them for years and years without making them cost $9000.00 plus tax. Nooo it's not saving any money for us users, that is a blatent lie. it's making something very shoddy, very cheaply, so that your profit margin is huge.. they dont care that their win-crapodems are junk, in fact they know that they sell an inferior product... all of the manufacturers do... (Let's see... let's blatently lie about 56K modems....) the spiel about software modems are cheaper is 100% bull, it makes them able to sell you the same damn modem next year with a flashy new install program...

    Look at sever brands of winmodems... they all look alike, and act the same...

    besides, who actually believes that you can buy a winmodem cheaper than a good hardware modem?? at my local staples I found a good external modem for less than a sportster internal 3crap!

    It's all lies.... everything said by any manufacturer is a lie...

  • Can somebody post some URLs for some Linux CPU temp monitors? I looked on Freshmeat but only found something called /proc/health that didn't even compile. Thanks.
  • I compile, download files, play mp3's with gqmpeg, and either irc, telnet, or play games all at the same time!

    Not to mention various other jobs that are scheduled automatically.

    I don't want my download slowing down; I don't want my mp3's skipping, I don't want my irc/telnet lagging and I don't want to wait forever for my compiles to finish.

    In short, I want ALL MY CPU POWER available for running applications and if I can offload a task to hardware then I'll do it.

    Linmodems are not for me. :|
  • Hmm... Funny you mention it - that *has* been done for radio modems (AX.25, is it? I'm really unfamiliar with that stuff) and is included in the kernel already.

    Wonder how the CPU load of that compares to a more traditional sw modem. .
  • Whoa! <bubble>POP!</bubble>

    (Dammit, Slashdot, when I type something in, preview it, it looks okay, and I submit it, *NOTHING*SHOULD*CHANGE*.. Fix it, Rob.)
  • Well sort of. Without a program like cpuidle. When the cpu isn't computing it's running in it's idle loop. So it is still running running operations. They just don't do anythin (A NO OP). Therefore the CPU is always running at "100%" just many of the cycles aren't computing anything. I think cpuidle actually stops the processor from running NO OPs, and therefore it runs cooler. However there has to be some sort of performance cost for this startup and stop action.

  • What planet are these people from? (Score:5)

    by DeadFish ( 11364 ) on Monday August 02, 1999 @10:10AM (#1769651) Homepage

    Although a hardware modem can cost up to five times more than a software modem,t hey are relatively cheap, with a current price tag at $100... ... 'I think that [in the future], a hardware modem will be a high-end luxury item'"

    Okay. So even though hardware modems are *already* fairly inexpensive and will continue to go down in price, they are going to be high-end luxury items? $100 is not a high-end luxury price. The only way anyone could consider a modem high end is if everything else available was complete garbage. Of course, this *is* the prediction of a winmodem software manager

    Personally, I fail to see how, with DSL, cable, and ISDN becoming cheaper and more available, any modem could be considered "high end". If you want high end connectivity, why modulate and demodulate a bunch of analog signal?

    Traditionally, software modems have a bad reputation in the linux community. In fact, they've earned the nickname "WinModems" because many are optimized to work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, and refuse to cooperate with any other OS.

    Funny, I always thought they "earned the nickname WinModems" because they say "WINMODEM" on the frigging box. It's the fricking model name, not a nickname.

    They do not just have a bad reputation in the linux community, they have a bad reputation among just about anyone with any idea how modems work. And it's not because they aren't very cross-format, it's because they are lousy modems. I work at an ISP, and I can say with some certainty that the loathing and contempt our tech support has for WinModems is *not* because they only work on windows, but because they barely work at all

    Phew. Felt good to get that out. So anyway. What planet did these people say they were from?

  • Load does indeed increase the temperature of the CPU. At least with Intel Pentium II and higher CPU. The CPU has internal voltage regulation and control circuitry. When the CPU is executing halt, nop or any other instruction that does not require bus/memory access or is in suspended/low power mode it actually consumes less power. Less power consumed == lower temperature. Whether there is a noticeable temperature difference between Windows being in idle mode and Linux in idle mode is, however, questionable.

    Ex-Nt-User
  • This is very true, they (PC-TEL) HSP modems tend to be very particular about who / what they connect to. Unfortunately they come in you average run of the mill e-machine. Since the public is generally in love with price over quality these days, I tend to see a lot of these modems. It is a shame they don't work well. I have always been leary of modems that have a minimum hardware req. And when the modem has a higher requirement than say a webserver, you know you are in trouble.

    I would be very skeptical about running one of these in a box, I am a big fan of real hardware. The only good thing would be that we would be able to tell all the people that whine in #linux that yes your POS modem might someday be supported :)

    Just my $.02
  • Really, this is a good thing. What is so great about Linux is the plethora of alternatives we can afford. Software modems are taking a heavy beating on Slashdot mostly beacuse people prefer not to use them. However, why is it that those same people are not complaining about Linux running other inferior hardware? Example: Why are attempts to run Linux on 386s not flamed? Why are we not all running Linux on Alphas when that is an architecture regarded by many as superior to x86?


    My impression is that a company that wants to give another option to us is a good thing. Look at the fight we gave Nvidia to release Linux drivers. We fought and we won. We didn't say "I hate hardware acceleration." Now a company comes along to give us a product and we meet it with criticism.

    Personally, I would rather chew sand than buy a software modem but who am I to decide what is best for all of us? As long as I have a choice, anyone that wants to give us more hardware is good.
    -Clump
  • Everybody is complaining about software modems being the bain of technologies existence. Isn't a software modem analgous to an OpenGL ICD? Is that bad? Software modems do have their place and their usage. More hardware for Linux is almost always good.
  • You misread.

    $200 machine. $50 of it is for the hardware modem (I've been corrected as to the cost of the modem in these machines).
  • HARDWARE MODEMS!? A *LUXURY*?!

    *gaspcoff* Okay.. I think I'm done laughing now. Wait. *coffhackwheeze*

    Somebody tell that two bit hack of a writer to get the hell out of the business, please. Or at least get their facts straight. I lost a LOT of respect for LinuxWorld's editors for letting this one through. The technical inaccuracies of this article are blatant and rampant.

    "Although a hardware modem can cost up to five times more than a software modem, they are still relatively cheap, with a current price tag at $100 for a high-quality model, he said."

    Stupid error number one. Please go visit CompUSA before making such claims, you incredible morons.

    Diamond SupraExpress 56PCI, $80.
    Diamond SupraExpress 56e, $120.

    Okay, hrm. $80*5 is $400. Gee. The hardware modem isn't five times as much. It's not even twice as much. And that's an EXTERNAL too! *NEXT!*

    SupraExpress 56PCI, $80.
    SupraExpress 56i, $70.

    Waitasecond. The SupraExpress 56i is a HARDWARE ISA PnP MODEM. (Trust me; I recommend them frequently. I know 'em.) And it's *LESS* than the PCI! Will you PLEASE *PLEASE* get your facts straight, folks?

    "PC-TEL engineers don't disagree with Ockman's assessment that hardware modems aren't likely to disappear anytime soon. "I think that [in the future], a hardware modem will be a high-end, luxury item," said William Hsu, software manager for PC-TEL."

    They already are if you're buying from an OEM. There are no OEMs remaining save for smalltime ones that offer hardware modems, as far as I know. Next.

    "In fact, they've earned the nickname "WinModems," because many are "optimized" to work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, and refuse to cooperate with any other OS."

    Get me my cluebat, or hold me back.

    They're called WINMODEMS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT USR CALLED THEM FROM DAY ONE, YOU INCOMPETENT FOOLS! They *REQUIRE* Windows because the drivers use some funky API, DirectX I believe, to simulate a DSP in the processor. GODS!

    "Even on a powerful 400-MHz processor, a software modem can demand as much as 10 to 15 percent of the CPU's total throughput."

    CPU performance isn't measured in throughput you idiots. Gods. And that percentage is totally wrong. The average WinModem (Lucent LT chipset) requires between 15 and 30 percent of your processor time at realtime priority to achieve ~4.8k/s. I've seen it in person.

    I can't believe the ignorance and blatant lies that jouranlists are allowed to send to print these days. Falsehoods, libel, slander, hatemongering speech, and worse. Either way, somebody needs to write these people at LinuxWorld a serious reality check.

    -RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
  • ok, I am going to list some modles, HP 600, HP 660C, HP 670C, HP 672C, HP 690C, HP 692C, HP 694C. all of these work well with linux. now if you get any HP printer that ends with CXE dont buy it, but my HP 692C works very well with Linux. Try this simple test to see if it is a software printer. boot to a DOS disk, and type this `type config.sys > PRN` if your printer starts printing out stuff, then it has alteast hardware support for text printing, and can probably print a file in PCL just fine. one final note, stay away from the 7xx series of HP printers, every one that I have seen is a software printer....
  • Well there goes my dream of bying a computer with a good modem
  • No, this this certainly applies to winmodems specifically (at least, as compared to hardware modems).

    If you've got a real hardware modem following the AT command set and communicating via a real UART, you don't need vendor-provided OS drivers. Worst case, you have to change the init-string a little. Ooooh. Big whoop.

    If your software modem doesn't have any drivers for your new OS... you're screwed.
  • We (the Linux community) have complained about software modems for years. Doesn't it seem a bit hypocritical for us to do the same thing? Software modems are inherently limited to a certain number of platforms, and they require a certain amount of CPU time to run. Not to mention the security concerns of adding yet another driver running as root. It's not worth the risk or the hassle.
    ----------------------------------------- --------------
    If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,
  • Ockman sees the value of this approach. "Any options that allow Linux appliances to be more inexpensive to the consumer [are] good, but [the option] needs to be examined to see if it makes sense," he said. "The question is, do people really need Linux-based iToasters that plug into the phone?"

    Well it could be running worse: embedded Win CE (which in my book stands for Windows: crappier edition)

  • Another company cashing in on buzzwords? I couldn't tell if they are going to write the drivers or just release some specs.

    Also, when the article mentions how Linux users tend not to like software modems, I know that's the case. No one I know wants a software modem, it doesn't matter what OS you run, it's still not worth the cheaper price.
  • stay away from the 7xx series of HP printers, every one that I have seen is a software printer....

    The PPA For The Masses [httptech.com] page says it has some GPLed software to drive at least some of the 7xx-series HP printers (with the help of Ghostscript).

    I've not used it, so I can't say one way or the other how well it works.

  • Goal number one, I'd love to see, Linux, or some UNIX variant on as many desktops, servers, laptops, set top boxes, toaster, cars, refrigerators as possible.


    What is hindering this? Not much, but WinModems have been a thorn in the side of Linux for awhile. Why have they prevailed? No, the evil microsoft giant hasn't shoved it in people's faces. The fact of the matter is, they are cheaper. Cheaper, doesn't mean better, but cheaper is more valued than better to OEMs.


    When I purchased my machine, long ago, from gateway, a winmodem was slipped inside. Unknown to me, but i noticed.. I didn't do as well as other modems. When the CPU load got high, my connection stuttered, dropped, and my mouse got drunk. With a 56k modem, connecting at 53000 or something like that bps... I was only getting 2.5kbps!


    So, time goes by, I install linux (around january) and gasp, come june, I try to dial up to my newfound *non proprietary ISP* and discover. Winmodem = death. Sharp slap in the face.


    Two choices, sit on my butt, and wait for the OSS community to shoot something useful into my phone jack, or buy a new modem. I'm choosing the latter.


    The question is, how many prospective linux users will run into this problem and just *give up*? A Linmodem sold to OEMs is garbage, but a step in the right direction. What we need. Is to work out and support those Winmodems regardless of manufacturer.


    They may suck. But a new linux user is a new linux user, regardless of hardware power or modem type.



  • I'm curious as to if people think this is a good thing or a bad thing. Personally I'm torn. Software Modems for Linux == Good. Software Modems == Bad.

    If they were to release the specs in general, as they said they are considering, then I don't think I'd have any real reservations, but if not I think we're back in the same old show. What about the BeOS users? What about the FooOS?

    Specs please, or I'll stick with my hardware modem!
  • Thousands of posts all over the usenet:

    Subject: NEED MODEM HELP!!!!!!

    hi, i just bought this linmodem and cant get it working under windows. CAN SOMEONE HELP ME???? a window just pops up and says it cant find a driver for the unknown card...
    ---
    hehehehe.
  • The one thing that I appreciate about running Linux is that it runs the CPU several degrees cooler than in Windows (my impression was that it's because Linux actually sends idle commands to the CPU, whereas Windows sits in a tight loop and polls (or something along those lines)), allowing more freedom in how fast my CPU runs. *inModems would worsen this no?


    Anyway, this just seems like another version of the circle of life that video hardware has undergone. Why should communications hardware be any different?

  • Right on, the MWAVE was the worst modem I have ever seen in my life. Modem and Sound card integrated into one pile of horse .... When you want to play sound you have to reduce the modems throughput to 14.4. Not only that a week after I purchased one my computer would freeze for no apparent reason. Once I removed my MWAVE the problem was solved. I did not even want to trade in my MWAVE for a new one. I bought a sound blaster and modem blaster and never looked back.

    ---------------------------
    ^_^ smile death approaches.
  • Well, I think this is rather bad for normal Linux users who would rather have good hardware than cheap hardware, but to vendors of low-cost PCs, this is a pretty good thing. Instead of a modem being a quarter of the price of the computer ($200, $50 modem), it can be an eigth.

    But, I certainly won't be caught using one.
  • I really agree with you on the 600 series DeskJets from HP. I think they're the best budget color inkjets on the market.

    Don't worry about the suffixes though. When you see the same model number (like the 895) with C, Cse, and Cxi suffixes they are all the same printer. The C model is for the Canadians, the Cse is for the big chains, and the Cxi is for the small HP reseller shops. The same is often true for two printers that seem identical spec-wise but one has a model number incremented by two. The 720 and the 722 are an example. Sometimes the software bundles are different, but its the same printer in both boxes.
  • Hypocritical? Not really, as so far no-one's saying it's a good thing. Few people will, I suspect; the two main concerns I have are the 'modem as root' that you've mentioned along with the resources hog that any such device would necessarily be.

    It'd be a nice thing to have available as an option if you've got a space PCI slot and nothing else, but I can't see it catching on.
  • PCTEL modems for Winblows are total shit. We tell our customers right off the bat that we can not even guarantee the shitpile will even work with our service... If the tradition continues, I will tell people, "Get an external modem..."
  • My friend just got a new PC, which has a winmodem. OS differences aside, he has a p3 450. When he is online running very little, his winmodem gets about the same speed my hardware modem gets. If he starts playing an mp3 (about 1% of his CPU), he loses a full KB off his download speed (IE from 3.5 KB/s to 2.5 KB/s). I can play an MP3, have 2 or 3 IE windows (sorry...) open, have my WinTV (which takes up 10% of the cpu for it's interpolation software) running, and mIRC on my p2 400 (same ram), and I still get good rates downloading software (when downloading HTML, i have seen my modem hit 132KBps!). It's internal and works with both windows and linux.
  • For more information about this check out Intel's spec sheets. [intel.com]

    Ex-Nt-User
  • When referring to my winmodem, I call it the "not a modem", cause it's not a modem. It just a phone jack with a little bit of logic built in. My not a modem is a 56k and when I try to do something like play q3test, it totally craps out and disconnects. My "regular" 33.6 works just fine when I play quake. Go fig. All you people out there with suck-ass ping times, get a real modem.

  • Hegemony (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I have a prophesy:
    A year ago, Linux was underground as far as the media was concerned. Linux was not worth a few sentences in a good newspaper. However, we all fought to have this change. We had an ideal and we wanted recognition for this ideal. However, things have changed. The media discovered a new play thing. Economists have embraced Linux as a movement toward higher technology, which will ultimately improve the economy because people will continue to spend more. We have won... Or have we?

    Our ideal was to create an open-source, free intellectual environment for everyone. This would level the playing field and make the world a better place for humanity. However, the establishment doesn't want this. They want nice, easy, effortless, guaranteed, profit. So what do they do when a little star is born? They subject it to hegemony -- the practice of undermining, distorting, and disarming ideologies. How did they do this? They embrace Linux. Then they twist our arms.

    First they create their own, slightly restrictive open source licenses. Next, the government gets involved in defending their old buddies against pirating, crackers, and terrorists. The government decides that software is a good thing to regulate and does so. They completely ignore Linux, allowing it to grow. But they also set the course for Linux. They make it easy for companies to do what they want with Linux. Those darn licenses guarantee profit for many corporations.

    Finally, the companies transfer the old enemy *into* Linux. They do so under our noses, unexpectedly. The slip a proprietary modem card into a proprietary mother board running a proprietary version of Linux. They sell this to your mother, who is happy until something goes wrong (cracked passwords, hardware failure, software failure, etc.) Then your mother runs through the same old hoops we used to accuse Windows of providing. We have become the enemy. We have been injected with a virus by the establishment, converting us into one of their minions.

    We are Luke Skywalker, born to replace his father at the side of the evil Emperor. We must resist the temptation to do as they bid. We must stay strong to our old ideals, resist killing our predecessor. If we do, we will become him.

    -B
  • Being less knowledgeable on this subject, let me ask the question:

    Will future versions of Linux ever require that the "LinModem" driver be updated? In this case, would we not be dependent on the manufacturer for such updates?

    If yes, this is a bad thing indeed. Closed source model through and through!

  • >We (the Linux community) have complained about software modems for >years. Doesn't it seem a bit hypocritical for us to do the same thing?

    Nope. The problem was that the companies (3com ect) that make this junk (winmodems) and their supporters wanted the linux users to basically create the drivers for them, which we absolutely refused to do. Now that a company has created the drivers for their modem it's no big deal, since they aren't basically telling us to do *their* job for them. If anything, this is going to put the rest of the winmodem makers in a bind. If they don't start shipping drivers for other platforms, people are most likely going to start asking why? There's a pretty good chance we might even start seeing lawsuits being filed against winmodem makers because of this. This story ought to proving interesting.....
  • There are problems that bother me though: Companies like corel don't give out there stuff open source. Code Warrior is for RedHat only. The more the linux community accepts this the more hypocritical we look. I am proud to say that I have 100% open source code on my system. I do believe it is great that 95% more or less of linux's stuff is open, but if companies like corel, oracle, etc. are not planning to play by the rules the linux community is in danger! We can only win if open source becomes cool. If major companies trample all over us in the name of progress, the linux community will look like hypocrits.

    ---------------------------
    ^_^ smile death approaches.
  • Accually he was probably a pompous ass cause he was frustrated. I know a person who works tech support who frequently gets calls about lexmarks (he doesn't work at lexmark tech support btw) and states that they are pure evil. Great for a while, but once they start acting weird there is almost nothing that can be done from the typcial user level over the phone.
  • I agree with you comepletely.
  • nono.. i didn't say, it started with the graphics people learning. they have learned.
  • This doesn't happen under Linux. Partly because the only code that doesn't really work is marked that way eg odd version 2.3.x as apposed to 2.2.x. Also, if the driver did crash, the driver crashes. I am assuming it is a module unless they release the code, but even then it can be modular. In that case rmmod linmodem;insmod linmodem . done crash fixed.
  • I worked at an ISP that ran 3com terminal servers and PCtel modems had a VERY difficult time connecting to 3com/USR products. Very bad modems!

  • Your choice of CPU is irrelevant to this discussion.

    Hardware acelleration of graphics was essential because the task of setting up triangles and drawing textures on them is very repetitive and redundant. The acellerator takes that load off the CPU, freeing it for other things (Why do you think people want lighting and geometry acelleration on their cards now?). Now software based modems are a total reversal of all of the ideas of dedicated processors for redundant tasks. Not to mention that if you use your CPU, it can't devote as much time to the modem, thus your speed drops (no FIFO buffers for data storage...)
  • A wise man once told me "There are two ways to get something done -- the right way and the cheap way."

    A software modem may be cheaper to buy, but in the long run you'll pay for it with poor quality transfer times, etc., just like printing with your WinPrinter slows your box to a crawl. (BTW, be glad you have an HP -- I've helped two people install Linux, only to have to tell them that their cheesy Lexmark won't work with Linux)

    I certainly hope that Linux users will respond to the introduction of this sort of crap by not purchasing anything less than a real hardware modem, thus forcing this junk off the market.

    Anyway, I agree with you -- money is better spent on hardware that doesn't tax the CPU.

  • Actually, AFAIK they're called WinModems because you can't use them in any DOS programs because they need a windows driver to provide the actual modem support.

    Doug
  • Luke, fortunately, didn't fall to the dark side... Not to mention that if we tell everyone who wants to try linux NOT to get a LinModem (post it on webpages, write it into the modem HOWTOs), it'll have a hard time infecting it.
  • My core disagreement with you is that you fail to take the past into account. Look at Unix. When more people adopted it, it became more supported and more powerful. The problem set in when it fragmented and became proprietary.

    Linux is open-source and will remain as such. Myself and others certainly will not stand by and let companies get out of control. As long as the source code is there, nobody can monopolize Linux.

    Further, paranoia over more people accepting Linux will get us nowhere. We can't say "I am afraid of your modem. Please keep it working only for Win32. I am afraid the Government will own Linux." Seriously, we need to realize that if we have the code, we have control. Anything too restrictive will be rejected or changed by the community.
    -Clump
  • Correction: Not windows only. Windows 3.1/9x only. I run NT (have to), and it doesn't work on that, and there *will be* no drivers for said printer under NT.

    big PITA to have to use the 9x laptop to print (not that the quality's any good, and the printout smudges, damn inkjets).
  • Software Modems == Bad Thing. Period. I got out of the ISP tech support world just as these things were coming in, but hearing the name PC-Tel still causes me to wake up at night in a cold sweat :-).

    Trust me: software modems are in absolutely no way worth the cost "savings".

    Besides, these things will probably come with binary-only drivers or something similarly useless. :-/

  • Yes, of course -- and it doesn't work with standard modem protocols, either, being limited strictly to radio ones. I was simply pointing out that such IS possible and inquiring as to how the CPU load compares to a winmodem running at a comparable speed (to get an idea of how much hw processing the winmodems do that is, in the soundmodem, strictly done by the CPU).
  • It's nice to get my score bumped. But why for "funny"? I was dead serious.

    I worked with synthetic aperture radar back in 1967 - when you processed the data with lasers, film, and optic benches because the closest to a supercomputer available (at least to me) was Cray's very first effort - around which any laptop can now run rings.

    You shoud be able to build all the microwave hardware you need for a synthetic aperture mine IMAGER starting with a couple X-band burglar sniffers (and maybe adding a PIN diode to sweep the frequency a bit better), plus a few low-grade discretes from Radio Shack, a pie plate, and a broom handle.

    The signals outside the microwave plumbing, both what you generate and what you detect, are no worse than audio frequency, and over 90% of your crunch is one two-dimensional FFT to about the resolution of your screen - just what the DSP shines at. With a modem card you ought to be able to get real-time imaging or close to it - a big improvement over developing film at the lab, twice, after the airplane comes back.

    Side-looking sonar is identical to one of the two modes of the radar "magic wand", except you use a sonar transucer you picked up for a hundred bux or so at West Marine or some other yacht outfitter, and you have to do your carrier yourself - which means a little extra crunch: a swept sine wave generation and a per-sample multiply at ultrasound frequencies. Still a piece of cake.

    You can put the sonar transducer on a stick and use it {in both modes} for finding mines, too. Like when they're in a rice paddy, for instance.

    Or hang the microwave gadget on your car window, drive by the local pizza parlor, and map the ovens and tables. B-)
  • no joke, i do tech support for an isp. (visualink.com in case you want to know), but by far the most problematic modem are winmodems (especially winLT). Its hard to tell people that they bought a piece of crap with a phone jack in the back.
  • Couriers have *TWO* processors on them.

    There's an 80186 that handles the "non-RT" critical stuff (i.e., RS232 interface, [compression?], AT command interpretation, flash memory, etc), and a DSP chip that handles the telephone work (basically, creating/analyzing the signal, and translating said signal into bits).

    There's a hidden "easter egg" (as always) in the courier that gives credit (as well as chip IDs) to the various hardware/software programmers.

    Oh, one other thing: I read somewhere (possibly /.) that certain WinModems (the *real* winmodems, I believe) actually have a DSP chip - just the controller (AT commands, RS232, etc) was offloaded onto the host processor, making it a signal analysis card...

    Me? I use an external modem (heh. No such thing as a external [Win|Lin|etc]modem yet). More costly, but nicer, IMHO (those blinky lights! :-) and knowing if my comp is screwed, or the connection [great for modem games: my friend has a bad line, so it's nice to know if the "lag" is caused by modem retrain {MR light goes off} or block errors {ARQ/FAX light goes off}).
  • If they don't release enough documentation to allow drivers to be written by anyone, then I'm not interested. Sure, I can stick it in my Linux box and use it - but what if I decide to change to BSD instead? What if the manufacturer goes bust and doesn't release updated drivers to deal with changes in the kernel? I use Linux not only because I find it more stable and usable than Windows, but also because I like the concept.

    In a nutshell, I'm not going to buy a piece of highly propriatory hardware just because it works in Linux as well as Windows. It's still a piece of highly propriatory hardware. .
  • "There are two ways to get something done -- the right way and the cheap way."

    I like that.

    I can see only two good uses for Linmodems:

    1. Used in an iToaster type of device (cheap $200 web surfing box).

    2. Paperweight.
  • What would be the point?

  • Re:Quality of Service (Score:5)

    by Mr Z ( 6791 ) on Monday August 02, 1999 @10:48AM (#1769722) Homepage Journal

    You mentioned the following:

    Rather, in order to correctly interprete the wave signals from the modem in software required that the driver execute at specific times.

    For a perfect software modem, yes, this is true. But for a simple software modem, there are many things you can do to be "good enough", including the following:

    • Buffer up alot of samples to increase your tolerance for latency. The buffering could occur via DMA to system memory, I imagine.
    • Run as a real-time task or interrupt driven device driver to place your priority over the rest of the tasks on the system.
    • Treat dropped samples as line noise and just request a retransmit if you can't error-correct the glitch.
    • If you miss getting samples out to the board in time, no worries -- replay your previous samples and pray the link was idle so it just looks like the idle-time carrier. If it wasn't, the remote modem will behave as if it were line noise and all will still be well.

    After all, Win9x has the same problems as Linux does in this regards (eg. no guaranteed hard-real-time scheduling), yet software modems seem to function passibly in such an environment. If anything, Linux would probably do better than Win9x at this same task. In any case, missing a real-time deadline with a soft-modem would look like lag to the end user and little else. Annoying, but not fatal.

    Now, I'm not running out and signing up to buy a soft modem (particularly since I'm about to get DSL service, obviating the need for a POTS modem almost entirely), but there are some interesting ideas that could make LinModems popular, depending on how open PC-Tel is.

    • Software modem lights that actually work. (The ones I've seen in the past were worthless for actually diagnosing modem troubles. Eye candy at best.)
    • Real-time modem connection quality statistics, such as number of retrains, current symbol rate, etc... perhaps via an entry in /proc. The more detail, the better.
    • General on-the-fly control of modem parameters, such as explicitly requesting fallback/fallforward. For instance, lower symbol rates tend to work alot better for interactive sessions since latency is lower, but higher symbol rates tend to be better for downloading. You could actually request the modem to fall forward or fall backwards by signalling the driver directly. You can't really do that with an external modem.
    --Joe

    --
  • I have a notebook with a PCTel modem built in (TI Extensa)
    I would love to not have to pack my external around with me.

    Soft modem support in linux is a good thing, just think how many fewer times you'll have to respond to newbies "Is it a winmodem?"

    I've talked to many people who have installed linux on their box, only to find that they have a winmodem. So before they have a chance to see just how great linux they go back to winblowz 'cuz they can't afford a new modem at the time.

    The more hardware supported, the more people will try linux & maybe stick with it!

    As for stealing CPU cycles & driver having root access, of course you're not going to use these things on a mulituser box that already has a high CPU load, just like you wouldn't want to use software 3D on a graphics workstation.

    It's like any other piece of hardware/software you can take it or leave it! Unless you got unwittingly stuck with it like me & millions of other winmodem owners:(







    *
  • A driver for software modems under Linux would be a GOOD THING! More hardware support for Linux, especially vendor backed, is a GOOD THING! The more vendors start supporting Linux, the more OTHER vendors will see it as a growing platform and start supporting it as well!

    There are many people out there who want to run Linux but can't because they're "stuck" with a software modem. They can't afford a new modem! Support for their modem would be a good thing!

    *I* personally wouldn't use a software modem if given to me free on a silver platter. But there are many others who would greatly benefit from Linux support for software modems.

  • Not at all. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    > We (the Linux community) have complained about software modems for
    > years. Doesn't it seem a bit hypocritical for us to do the same thing?

    Actually, it's not hypocritical at all.

    It's not the Linux community that's making these modems. It's PC_Tel. I will *not* buy one of these, or a system that has one preinstalled.

    Software modems are a bad idea because they offload much of the modem's work to the CPU. This is bad, because most of that functionality is time-critical: I've seen software modems disconnect when the CPU load gets heavy. No more compiling while downloading. I even think it's a bad idea for anybody to build linux drivers for software modems, because it perpetuates bad hardware. Paraphrasing someone else's post yesterday, I'd rather see the bad hardware die with Windows.

  • #ifdef SMARTASS

    Great. So let's also get rid of NICs and disk controllers that can do DMA. After all, the CPU can just poll the data from the I/O ports. Oh, and those graphics accellerators? What a stupid idea. We can just have the CPU do blitting and fill in triangles. Yeah, and SMP stands for Stupid Money Pit.

    #endif

    There's something ... I dunno .. immoral and distasteful about this kind of thing. Consider how much money Intel spends on pumping steroids into the 386 architecture, compared to how much the other chipmakers have to spent to get similar performance gains. If x86 users are so apathetic about speed that they are willing to use dumb peripherals, then all the money Intel has spent in the 90s has been wasted. You could just use a slower CPU with smart peripherals and get the same performance, without Intel's customer base having spend millions (billions?) over the last few years trying to get the last few % out of the x86. What a waste.



    ---
    Have a sloppy night.

  • When the CPU is halted (HLT instruction), it burns very little power while it waits for an interrupt to wake it back up again. When the CPU is not halted, it burns a fair amount of juice.

    Linux (and I hear NT) execute a HLT whenever the ready queue is empty. Win9X sits in a busy loop.

    Ergo, CPU power consumption (and therefore temperature) is a function of system loading in OSes which halt the CPU (Linux, NT), and not on OSes which don't halt the CPU (Win9x).

    --Joe

    --
  • Don't get a lexmark! Maybe their higher-end printers are ok, but for 9/10ths of what a home user would get, it is windows all the way. Plus, they have extremely rude tech support. I called to see if I could get my 7000 working and the tech was an pompous ass. Besides, I've had enough problems with it even in windows.

    I discourage the use of lexmark printers wherever I can.

  • EasyPC spec (Score:1)

    by J4 ( 449 )
    There was a link on /. to a story [theregister.co.uk] about how Micros~1 won't be able to deliver a version of Win2k Consumer edition targeted at el cheapo computers in time for christmas2k. In light of the fact that "LinModems" are now available (The article _did_ say they were available to OEMs) the article I provided the link to seems appropriate to read again.
  • MWAVE isn't a software modem per-se. It's a DSP card, which needs software downloaded to it (MWaveOS?) to perform tasks involving the RJ11 port [answering machine, caller ID, modem, etc), and tasks involving the audio ADC/DAC (sound card).

    It's basically a DSP with RJ11 ports that happen to be telephone friendly, and mini stereo jacks. The reason why the speed drops is because that DSP doesn't have enough processing power to handle sound and modem simultaneously. (Side note: running sound and modem simultaneously takes more processing time than either one alone-task switching overhead)

    I have an MWave on this box, but resorted to an external modem and AWE32 card (I already have both, so might as well use them). Used MWave as another soundcard [single tasking, they're nice]. IRQ hell, though. Stopped when I ran NT full time (no drivers).
  • My mboard that i'll (eventually) be putting in a backpack to make my wearable does that, w/ the side effect that it has i/o sound and video w/ the highest point on the whole system being the proccessor fan on the socket 7 proccessor.

    But yeah its kinda annoying when there is a sticker that says 8 mb for the video card, when it just leaches off the main memory, but i RTFM'ed b4 i bought it
  • See the Linmodems [linmodems.org] site for more details.
    -russ
  • WinModem is a of USR
  • I don't see the problem. All drivers run in kernel mode, so by your logic we shouldn't support 3d video cards, since that's just one more driver running as root we don't need.

    If you wish to do so, you can spend an extra $50-$75 on a hardware modem. For those who want to spend the $50-$75 on something else, a WinModem/LinModem is a viable option.
  • My AMS Tech Roadster laptop computer came with a PC-Tel ShitModem [tm] internal (not pcmcia card.)

    Whenever the laptop gets slightly warm, which is usually after a half hour of use, the modem quits transfering data. Upon redial, it connects, but no data gets transfered... or if it does, it goes extremely slow--less than maybe 8 or 10 bytes a second. If I shut the laptop off and leave it off for 15 minutes or until it cools down, it will work again for a few minutes, and then It will break again. It isn't worth the irq the damn thing takes up. I bought a PCMCIA RealModem and it works great--Even if the laptop gets really hot from playing Unreal over the internet. The pcmcia card gets really really hot sometimes, but always works.

    I think some people should file a class-action lawsuit against PC-Tel because their modems are just plain useless. Even occasional users who browse the web to maybe read cnn.com once in a while--It is useless for them if they just "crash" after a few minutes. The fact that they require software to suck off of the CPU isn't the worst thing about PC-Tel modems. The worst thing is that they are pieces of shit that are unreliable and do not even work when they have their 'friendly windows environment' with their drivers loaded. Pricewatch.com shows pc-tel winmodems for like 15 or 20 dollars. Still not worth it one bit. You'd be buying something that just doesn't work.

    Incidentally, the damn PC-Tel modem loads a program called ptsnoop.exe which is run from one of the registry startup keys. I think it's about 30K in size. The modem won't even dial or accept any AT commands if this isn't loaded. Any takers with a disassembler? I'd be happy to give you a copy, contact ryan_antkowiak@hotmail.com :) But you have to tell me what you find out about it :)

    The most reverse engineering I ever do is hex editing a binary or using a resource editor.
  • Yeah, but if you remember what AGP texturing is.. The main system memory is used by the video card. Now, using system memory as a framebuffer, that's pure evil.
  • ... and PC-Tel's are the worst in an extremely crappy field. In ISP tech support, I would regularly advise customers with these pieces o' sh*te to throw them out the window.

    If the driver is open source, I can see it being a nice thing - there's LOTS of things you can do with a DSP.

    But the world really doesn't need this sorta thing.

  • Lats time I have checked on www.priceatch.com, you can buy a "REAL" 56k USR Internal ISA hardware modem for $55. It has jumpers on it and stuff, I have used 4 different OSes on this PC, and it never gave me any problems. Is that luxury? No
    The only reason why winmodems are popular is because the freaking PC manufacturers always put the cheapest hardware they can find, even in their high end systems. Last time I checked Micron defaults its Millennia MAX (P3-500) systems to winmodems. But you can always change it when ordering from their website.
  • PC-Tel seem to be the modem of choice for things such as e-machines, with cyrix processors that can't seem to provide the power the modem needs to operate. The *fastest* I have personally seen one of these connect(with a live connetion) is 28.8. Any noise on the phone line kills the connection. I feel like breaking out in tears as soon as I hear PC-Tel.... it's going to be a long call that I can't end quickly without being a jerk.)

    As soon as someone calls up with one of these pieces of crap I tell them to buy a new modem.
    As a ISP tech, I take all the crap from people saying they have a 56k modem and wondering why they are only conecting at 24000. I would just once love to tell them to go out, stick a crowbar in their wallet, and spring for a 150 dollar USR external.

    It is a pain in the ass to explain to someone that since they just spent 2500 dollars on a new PIII from $major_manufacturer (that'll never be used for anything more then talking to friends online), perhaps they ought to spend another hundred on their connection to the outside world
    The exact same thing goes for Rockwell HCF's (hint for any tech support people out there, "+MS=V34" is your friend) and Diamond Supras...even the externals.

    If there is going to be a Lin-modem, it should at least be on a modem with a DSP, not these HSP pieces of crap that are currently being put out.

    My rant is done, feel free to moderate, as an ISP bob, I'm just passionate about modems.

    Mikesch -- admitting my main system is currently a Cyrix with an LT Win-Modem (not all that bad... for a WinModem)
  • When the CPU has been idle for some time, Linux (and other well-engineered OSs) issue the hlt instruction. It puts the CPU in a 'sleep' state from which it gets out in any interrupt. After returning from the interrupt, it already 'forgot' it was in an sleep state and continues working normally.

    When the CPU is idle, this means no proccess has anything to do, and the only things left to do are answering to keyboard, timers, modems, sound DMA exaustion, IDE read/write completed, mouse movement, and other things like that. And they all use interrupts, so it gets out of the halt state without losing any cycles (besides, the hlt is only used after the cpu has been idle for some time, so if you are fully using the cpu no hlt will appear).

    When the proccesses are idle, they are all waiting for some event (blocking reads/writes and sleeping for some specified time being the most common). All those events can only happen after a ISR (so it'll wake up after a time interrupt, or after a disk interrupt, or after a keyboard interrupt, or after a NIC interrupt, etc.). So the CPU has actually nothing useful to do until an ISR happens.

    Once I wrote (under DOS, before I got Linux) a .com with only 18 hlts. When I run it, it waited for a second (timer is 18.2/sec under DOS, 100/sec under Linux/i386) and exited (ret to int 20 on psp).

    I hope someone understood.

  • Actually, um... I thought that Couriers had Intel CPUs in 'em. Like a 80186 or something. I never opening it up to check, though... Someone please set me straight before I start cracking black plastic...



    ---
    Have a sloppy night.

  • Re:Something that's always bothered me... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, you're not. To use another example (for everything but Quake and such):

    PIII/500 $400
    cool-but-still-analog modem $100
    total $500
    vs.
    K6-3/400 $200
    Spellcaster DataCommute ISDN card $200
    total $400

    Yes, I use a similar combination (no ADSL in the woods of East Texas, but ISDN all over, for a modest fee). And with ISDN, you get 128kb all day, all night, or SBT will fix it. I like that. With (2-4x, normally) compression, X is pretty cool as well.

    If you can't get ADSL or SDSL yet, get ISDN. Really. It is here, now, and pounds analog like cheap veal in every way possible. My connections take a fraction of a second, I can do support from home, my line quality is great (and required by the codes to be so), and I can keep the line up for weeks at a time without anything dropping me.

    I can make a similar argument for SCSI, but against the faster drives only, and with a similar cut in CPU speed vs. real speed. Buy quality and you can make do with less (systems, girlfriends, chocolate ...).
  • This would only be a good thing if the driver is free software. That would give us a chance to play with modulation schemes, etc., as ham radio operators are doing with sound cards - they've implemented radio modems in the linux kernel, using nothing more than a sound card for hardware.

    Without a free software driver, we're stuck with a dumb piece of hardware and a closed driver. No thanks. The embedded intelligence in a modem doesn't cost more than $10, so I doubt that would fly.

    I'd really like to encourage these guys...

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • If you want real hack potential, just hook your phone line up to your sound card. Now get to work on writing a modem emulator that way. ;-)



    ---
    Have a sloppy night.
  • WinModem is a specific brand, but I believe that he's saying that *all* software-based modems have earned the infamous name of WinModem because they only work with you-know-what.

    I wish that I would have known before that 98%of PCI modems are WinModems. I wasted money on two of them so far. =( I'm waiting to see if I get cable access soon...or else it's external for me.

  • Damnit.. the graphics people learned to offload the 3d
    graphics generators onto the video cards to make it simply
    better.

    Actually taking the load off the main CPU has been going
    on for a long time.
    The earliest example when I am aware of worked by
    the main processor only doing I/O to magnetic tape,
    with seperate devices to transfer paper tape/punch card
    date to magnetic tape and to print the data on tape.
  • Nothing new. Embedded systems have long been implementing software features instead of hardware peripherals to save cost(and weight/size). The bottomline is that hardware will _always_ cost more than software. If you can stand the 1% performance hit, and it's worth the price cut, then there's no reason not to. As processors get faster and hardware gets smaller, software will dominate in our cost-cutting world.

    -Adam

    "The rich live hand-to-mouth too-just on a higher level."
    -John Guare
  • That's not true though. I spend plenty for those 400Mhz+ processors. If a software modem will take 15% of the CPU time out of my system, I'll spend the extra money and get a real modem. The hit is a lot more than 1%. I think they even mention that in the article.

  • Re:Maybe They'll work better... (Score:4)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Monday August 02, 1999 @09:42AM (#1769771)
    You won't see improvements, you didn't get first post, and Suse 6.2 is just about out (if it isn't already).
    Happy birthday.

  • Re:Isn't this kind of hypocritical? (Score:3)

    by dirty ( 13560 ) <dirtymatt.gmail@com> on Monday August 02, 1999 @09:47AM (#1769773)
    I have to disagree with the "another driver running as root" concern you brought up. By that logic linux shouldn't support ANY new hardware, since all drivers run in kernel mode (which is actually more privlaged than root) and can do anything they gosh darn please to do. Then again hardware is pretty much in the same situation.

    Software modems themselves are bad. But they do allow for some really cool hacks. You could build an ultra cheap PBX out of some of these, or answering machine, or something else. Think of it more as a computer interface to a phone. Even TCP/IP telephony would be more attractive with a real phone.

    If this company sells them cheap enough, and makes the docs completely open, I might pick up some and hack away. I'd never use one of these things as a modem though. Maybe it's just me but I don't think the $5 I'm gonna save is worth the CPU time it's gonna cost me.
  • A software modem is essentially a downloadable DSP chip with a fast interface to the computer on one side and a phone line on the other. To sell one to Linux folk you have to open-source the code - and probably the board schematic, too.

    Think about the hack potential (both white and black) of such a device!

    And don't forget tapping into the DSP lines behind the telephone interface.

    I'm already drooling over the prospect of making a side-looking sonar for my wife's boat, to explore the local bay's floor, or a landmine-finder synthetic aperture radar hacked up out of a couple radar motion detectors and a laptop with one of these "modems". DSPs have specialized instructions for FFTs, which should make it MUCH easier than using a sound card and pure software.
  • fireproof wrote:

    A wise man once told me "There are two ways to get something done -- the right way and the cheap way."

    I've heard it a slightly different way:

    Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three)
    -- From RFC 1925, The Twelve Networking Truths [isi.edu], by R. Callon, I.O.O.F.


    ----
  • Linux needs this support. Not everybody can just buy a 'real' modem. Yes, winmodems suck ass, but almost every new laptop comes with a winmodem. Winmodems have less chips and require a lot less power than a normal modem which makes them ideal in the OEM's view for laptops. You can get real pcmcia modems, but even most of the new pcmcia modems are winmodems.



  • I believe Rendus was referring to $50 being the cost of a hardware-driven DSP modem, thus being a very high percentage of the total $200 of these cheap computers they want to build.

    Those $20 modems you saw are the software-driven "Host Signal Processing" modems, which is what is being debated here (DSP vs. HSP).

    I know this because I bought one the other day, and promptly returned it. I had not bought a modem for a couple of years, and had no idea that HSP == WinModem. I just saw that it was cheap, and ISA (it was intended for a 486/33).

    The box described hardware requirements as being at least a 200MHz machine running Windows 95/98 or NT. I dismissed this because I frequently see "requirements" on products that are not necessarily true, but rather just there to comfort folks that don't "know better". "Hmm, I have Windows 95, I wonder if it will work with my computer. Yes! It says requires Windows 95, so it must work!"

    Needless to say, I'm the one that "didn't know better" this time, regarding WinModems. :-) I've generally had very nice "good enough" success with cheap hardware, but modems are definitely not something I'll cheap out on again.

    An interesting thought with the LinModem though -- if the driver and specifications are sufficiently open-sourced and stable, the $200 Linux box used for net surfing could have lots more potential as well, as software for voice mail could be written as well and integrated with the user interface.

    Even if the user had a DSL or Cable Modem connection, a cheap "LinModem", given a stable enough driver, could still be used to provide said answering machine capabilities.

    And what about a Linux "telephone server" in a wired home, where your conversation is transmitted digitally to the server before sent out over the phone line? Whoa, I'm starting to get some scary privacy-related issues here, I better stop writing...
  • "I think that [in the future], a hardware modem will be a high-end, luxury item."

    Sounds like something from SegFault.

    "Soon every household will have at least 512k SVGA Cards!"
  • I've always thought that the reason WinModems aren't supported in Linux had nothing to do with the release of specs for the drivers. Rather, in order to correctly interprete the wave signals from the modem in software required that the driver execute at specific times. The only way to assure this would be to allow quality of service in the kernel. This warps the design of the kernel and has not been allowed by the kernel maintainers.

    So, along comes someone trying to port their WinModem driver to Linux. How are they going to get the quality of service they need? Are they going to hack the kernel? Do you want your hardware vendor requiring you to hack your kernel in a way that the kernel maintainers themselves do not accept?

    Or, is this a vaporware announcement intended to make their stockholders think that they are tapping into a market just waiting for a product.

    Don't trust this announcement. I'll believe it when I see a Linux machine with a LinTel modem running.

  • winmodems aren't so bad (Score:3)

    by bloosqr ( 33593 ) on Monday August 02, 1999 @09:59AM (#1769817) Homepage
    I know I am probably going to be flamed for this but I don't think winmodems are really such a bad thing for home use in the same way IDE drives are not so bad for home use. I have an 28k external modem for my linux mach. and a 56k internal which i basically got for free from tigerdirect when I bought my machine.

    I think if you are logged in all day and run jobs in the background on a regular basis then by all means you should get a real modem, but to be honest everything i've ever done on the windoze side of the box (which basically involves downloading the random piece of software) the winmodem has pretty much worked exactly as specified and i get 56k transfers basically for free (which isn't so bad really).. running netscape isn't exactly CPU intensive :) Moreover, just to test out what the degradation really was like, I had the machine play mpegs (video) (I have no mpeg card so it was softwarebased decompression) at the same time and got less than 10% loss, still well above a typical 28k modem.
    (Incidentally the box is an AMD 350-K2 w/ 64
    megs of sdram, to give you an idea of the power)

    I think if you are trying to build a $200 box for your parents so they can send email, read cnn news and other crap, winmodems are the way to go, since one of the nice things about linux is legally building costeffective machines where every penny counts, i think it would be nice to take advantage of the cheap hardware. (In the same way we now all take advantage of cheap IDE drives which are also more cpu intensive than your typical SCSI drive at home)

    just so you know, more than likely if i actually buy a modem it'll be external etc but thats only because most of us are more than typical online users. (Incidentally i think i'll switch to SCSI as well next time around, mostly because 4 IDE device limit is out of control) but again the performance loss is really negligable as far as I can tell for doing typical home use stuff (not games obviously) but real_audio,surfing,email etc..
  • >CPU heat and CPU load have no relationship to each other.


    Well, someone thinks it does! (enough to write a program for windows to do this)


    CpuIdle lowers the CPU temperature by disabling it when not needed. This prolongs the CPU life (a decrease by 10C doubles the life span) and cuts power consumption.


    cpu idle home page [bugcomputer.com]


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