Old Style Serial Modem not Recognised

[Taz25]

Hi,
I have installed Fedora10 on a base unit for my father in law, but for some reason I cant get PPP to see the modem, when you queery it. It is conected onto the serial port of the motherboard, + it does have power. Help please I do not know what " /dev " I should be looking at.

[PabloTwo]

Hello-

If it is a true full hardware modem and in working condition, it should work in Fedora.

Provided there are no other 'serial' devices on the pci bus, it would almost certainly be assigned to /dev/ttyS0

I always use 'system-config-network', as root, to configure dialup modems. From the system-config-network (Network) configuration GUI, you can ADD a new network device by selecting the NEW option, then clicking on Modem Connection. You can then select the newly added Modem Device and configure it using both the 'Devices' and 'Hardware' tabs (click on Edit when the Modem is highlighted to get the configuration options for each of those tabs). The configuration options should be pretty much self explanatory, including setup for your ISP info.

Once you have it configured, make sure the checkbox under 'Profile' is checked to make it an active device. It's also a good idea to check the box that says 'Allow users to control this device', which will allow activation/deactivation as non-root. I always uncheck the box that says 'Allow NetworkManager to control this device', but that's your choice.

When properly setup, you can dialup from the command line with 'ifup ppp0' and hangup with 'ifdown ppp0'. If you're using Gnome or XFCE, both have panel applets called 'Modem Lights', though they are not the same program, that are handy to use. I don't know what KDE offers for a panel applet for modems.

[marko]

KDE has "kppp" which is a good dialer

[PabloTwo]

Also, you might confirm for clarity: I interpreted your modem connection as an external modem that was cable connected into a COM port header on the motherboard, probably through a slot cover that provides either a DB-9 or DB-25 serial port to the modem serial cable and internally to the COM port header.

It may be that you will have to fiddle with the serial port settings using the 'setserial' command, as root. Refer to the man page for setserial. You can use it to both query and set serial port parameters. Minicom is a terminal program provided in Fedora you can use to test the modem with once the serial port parameters are setup properly, baud rate, IRQ, etc.

[Taz25]

Its on the DB-9 plug. I have heard of minicom before but not setserial. Will give them a go and let you know.

[PabloTwo]

It's been awhile since I played with the setserial command, so none of that is very fresh in my mind/memory. But something else to keep in mind if you have trouble getting anything to see/recognize the serial port. Check in the bios setup program that the serial port is 'enabled'. Also in the bios, you can generally have the bios 'auto' assign I/O address and IRQ number (probably will default to COM1 in that case), or you can manually select which COM port and I/O address and IRQ number to use. It might be useful just to see what the bios has to say about the onboard COM port.

Here is a link to a post on the forum describing some of the ways to use the setserial command to both query and set serial port parameters which you might find helpful. If you do a search on the forum using 'setserial' as the search criteria, you'll find many threads to browse through.

Minicom is not an easy beast to use at first try. You will need to run it as root, and then press the CTRL-A and then Z (not all three at once... CTRL and A keys together, release, then press the Z key) to get the menu options. You'll need to use CTRL+A then P to bring up the 'comm Parameters' menu, where you tell minicom which /dev/ttyx to use and other settings such as baud rate to use.

Once that is set up properly, then you should be able to just type something like ATZ in the minicom terminal, and, if all is working as it should, get back some response from the modem, like

ATZ
OK

If you can get that far, then you know you have a working serial port and a working modem.