"Lucid" puppy 5.1 not recognizing winmodems

[Raman]

With regard to recognizing winmodems (minimum hardware-based dialup modems requiring the various Windows operating systems to operate the winmodems), I have finished testing Puppy 5.1, Quirky Retro 1.2, and Puppy 4.3.1 -- all booted into ram memory via (F2) -- on sixteen (16) different Pentium computers -- laptops and desktops -- ranging from those originally sold with Windows 98 (first edition, not second edition), continuing through Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, up to and including Windows XP SP3, and the results are as follows:

1. Puppy 4.3.1 recognized all sixteen winmodems, and all 16 winmodems dialed to a successful dialup connection.

2. Quirky Retro 1.2 recognized all sixteen winmodems, and all 16 winmodems dialed to a successful dialup connection.

3. Lucid Puppy 5.1 recognized none of the sixteen winmodems, so naturally Puppy 5.1 could dial none of them.

4. By using an external hardware modem that operates on both USB and external RS232 serial connections, and by booting all into ram memory via (F2), Puppy 5.1, Quirky Retro 1.2, and Puppy 4.3.1 recognized and successfully dialed the external serial modem to a useable dialup connection via a USB or a serial cable connection, or both, on all sixteen machines.

Is there something that I should be doing with Lucid Puppy 5.1 to get it to dial and connect to PPP via winmodems?

Hail Puppy!

Raman

[Raman]

I note that no one has replied to the apparent fact that "Lucid" Puppy 5.1 does not recognize installed winmodems, even though there seems to be considerable interest in the apparent fact that "Lucid" Puppy 5.1 does not recognize installed winmodems.

One of the many advantages of the Puppy linux concept is the incorporated ability to make older machines work on the internet, and Puppy has certainly done that over time. And another of the many advantages of the Puppy linux concept is to maintain the many advantages of Puppy over time, even into the upgraded and improved releases.

My hobby – becoming an avocation – is salvaging older computers, desktops and laptops, and then returning them to useful computing on the internet, giving them away to folks who say they want them and appear to benefit from their use on the internet.

It goes without much saying that Puppy linux makes this task easier for me, and by doing so, it makes Puppy an increasingly popular linux distribution among folks who, without the availability of free computers, probably would not enjoy the many, many benefits of internet computing.

Happily or unhappily, much if not most of this low budget internet computing must necessarily take place on the less advanced and much cheaper dialup connections, which of course means via installed winmodems.

So, I advocate for the continuing power of Puppy winmodem computing, which in turn necessarily means that I must continue to advocate for the latest releases of Puppy and puppy variants to maintain the ability to recognize installed winmodems, and effectively dial them to useable internet connections.

Perhaps the current apparent inability of Puppy 5.1 to recognize winmodems can be fixed?

Hail Puppy!

Raman

[Frank Cox]

I had so much trouble with printers on Lucid I never got around to the dial up issue. I agree that is a basic function Puppy was originally designed for.

I am surprised there has not been a bigger response.

[rcrsn51]

Huge Problem ... I had so much trouble with printers on Lucid ....

I couldn't find any posts from you concerning printers and Lucid. Is there a particular issue you want to discuss?

[BarryK]

Modem support is a matter of having a Linux kernel with modem drivers compiled for it. Currently we cannot compile all of those drivers with recent kernels. Thus, you need a Puppy with an older kernel.

You may be interested in Wary 0.7 which offers "mix-n-match":

http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01792

The problem with Ubuntu is that it is designed to work with the 2.6.33 or later kernel (or is that 2.6.32) and we cannot compile all modem drivers with it. Perhaps in the future the modem drivers will be upgraded, but cannot say if/when.

[Raman]

Thank you for your explanation of the current winmodem problem.

I personally have had so little trouble with Puppy over the years that naturally I have come to expect something akin to (virtual) perfection from the various Puppy releases.

Perhaps sometime soon the winmodem problem can be solved in the newer releases of Puppy and its many excellent variants.

Until then, Puppy 4.3.1 and Quirky Retro 1.2 will work fine.

Thanks again.

Hail Puppy!

Raman

[Frank Cox]

Huge Problem ... I had so much trouble with printers on Lucid ....

I couldn't find any posts from you concerning printers and Lucid. Is there a particular issue you want to discuss?

Thanks

That was over a month or so ago I was trying to install a HP printer for a customer but I got so frustrated I just set Ubuntu up and it installed it automatically. I think I will just stick with 431 for a while longer.

I may take you up on it one of these days though. Appreciate the offer,

[Frank Cox]

Thanks for the explanation Barry, I am happy with 431 but I might have a go at the wary you suggested.

[Raman]

With regard to recognizing winmodems, I have finished testing Puppy 5.1.1, Quirky Retro 1.2, and Puppy 4.3.1 -- all booted into ram memory via (F2) -- on seventeen (17) different Pentium computers -- laptops and desktops -- ranging from those originally sold with Windows 98 first edition, continuing through Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, up to and including Windows XP SP1 and SP2 and SP3, with the addition today of a newish VISTA box, and the results are as follows:

1. Puppy 4.3.1 recognized all 17 winmodems, and all 17 winmodems dialed to a successful dialup connection.

2. Quirky Retro 1.2 recognized all 17 winmodems, and all 17 winmodems dialed to a successful dialup connection.

3. Lucid Puppy 5.1.1 recognized none of the 17 winmodems, so naturally Puppy 5.1.1 could dial none of them.

4. By using an external hardware modem that operates on both USB and external RS232 serial connections, and by booting all into ram memory via (F2), Puppy 5.1.1, Quirky Retro 1.2, and Puppy 4.3.1 recognized and successfully dialed the external serial modem to a usable dialup connection via a USB or a serial cable connection, or both, on all 17 machines.

Is there something that I should be doing with Lucid Puppy 5.1.1, or for that matter, with Puppy 5.1, to get the current Puppy release to dial and connect to PPP via winmodems? And if there is nothing that I can do, should Puppy developers move to maintain the unique position that Puppy has previously held vis-a-vis analogue dialup modems among the current Linux distributions? Current Linux distributions have apparently all but abandoned incorporating analogue dialup modems in their various toolkits, and consequently have effectively dropped practical support for them.

Vast numbers of dialup users exist in every corner of our world, and vast numbers of potential linux users are now being denied effective dialup in all current Linux distributions that I have now tried to use on dialup, as judged by my starting at the top of the popularity list of distrowatch.com and moving down to number eleven, which is Puppy linux. As of today, as far as I can determine though actual testing, no current linux distribution adequately services the needs of the dialup user, unless that dialup user is especially skilled in the use of scripts and related programing techniques.

Parenthetically, I think it is important to remember that in the current economic climate worldwide, various sources are now reporting that the numbers of dialup users are in fact increasing worldwide. Which is a telling commentary. And ought to be viewed as a “marketing opportunity

[Fox7777]

We had the same problem. If you are setting up a dialup computer, you currently need to use Puppy 4.3.1. Perhaps this will be fixed in the future.

[Raman]

Quirky 1.3 does not recognize WinModems fitted to the fourteen (14) reclaimed laptops and desktops currently available for testing here.

According to various dialup provider sources, including the popular Freedom List http://www.freedomlist.com/ which provides connections to dialup providers around the world, including free ISP dialup providers, the numbers of dialup users is finally increasing around the world, after a long, slow decline worldwide.

Puppy linux has been – and should be again -- the ONLY linux distribution that can adequately provide easy dialup connections to the large base of low-speed users around the world.

We need our dialup Puppy back.

Hail Puppy!

Raman

[Raman]

Using my current inventory of eleven (11) very old to fairly new PC's -- desktops and laptops -- booting with Wary-090-k2.6.30.5_scsi_modem.iso, with special emphasis on whether Wary-090-k2.6.30.5_scsi_modem.iso recognizes winmodems, the results obtained are as follows:

1. All six (6) desktops and laptops manufactured within the last five or six years (or so) both booted properly and recognized the mounted winmodems (software modems) commonly installed in Windows machines of these types. All of these machines logged into a usable dialup internet connection.

2. None of the five (5) desktops and laptops manufactured before, and sometimes long before, the last five or six years would successfully boot at all, with all of these machines giving the following error message, or variations of the following error message:

“Loading initrd.gz isolinx: Disk error 80“

“Ax=4280, diskerror 32 drive 9F

[Raman]

Using (Puppy) Wary 0.96 to boot my current inventory of twelve (12) very used desktops and laptops that together harbor processors ranging from the early pentium to the late pentium, I tested each computer with special interest in whether or not each computer recognizes and dials the installed winmodems to a useful dialup internet connection, and recognizes and activates the installed sound-audio capabilities, and the results I obtained are as follows:

1. All twelve (12) desktops and laptops booted properly and recognized the mounted winmodems (software modems) commonly installed in Windows machines of these types. Seven (7) of these machines logged into a usable dialup internet connection, and five (5) of these machines successfully logged into the ISP but did not activate a useable ppp internet connection. But all of the twelve machines produced a useable dialup internet connection via winmodems when booting with Puppy 4.3.1 and Quirky 1.2 Retro.

2. Warry 0.96 did not recognized any of the audio cards -- or equivalent -- of the twelve (12) desktops and laptops. But all of the twelve machines produced useable audio when booting with Puppy 4.3.1 and Quirky 1.2 Retro.

Hail Puppy!

Raman

[Karl Godt]

I would be interested if you know the `lsmod` and `modprobe` command and have ever looked into the Menu > System > BootManager to load the drivers ( kernel modules ( located at /lib/modules/ ) ) manually. I cannot imagine that these modules aren't there at /lib/modules/ .

A Softmodem is also referred to as a Winmodem because the first commercially available softmodems mostly worked only with the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems running on IBM PC compatibles. Although their usage has become more widespread on other operating systems and machines, such as embedded systems and Linux, they are still difficult to use on operating systems other than Windows due to lack of vendor support and lack of a standard device interface. The term "Winmodem" is a trademark of U.S. Robotics but it is usually used to describe other modems with similar technologies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem

[rerwin]

Puppy linux has been – and should be again -- the ONLY linux distribution that can adequately provide easy dialup connections to the large base of low-speed users around the world.

My (and Barry's) goal for the past few years has been to "make it so". My focus is to ensure that puppy supports automatically any modem that linux supports. That is where the impediments are -- we need the drivers to compile in the later kernels. There is an effort to keep up, but we must wait for that to happen. Wary096 is our "leading edge" of modem development and is intended to support the old hardware (as well as the new). I welcome any feedback from you on how we are doing, and whether I (or Barry) have missed something we can fix.
Richard

[BarryK]

2. Warry 0.96 did not recognized any of the audio cards -- or equivalent -- of the twelve (12) desktops and laptops. But all of the twelve machines produced useable audio when booting with Puppy 4.3.1 and Quirky 1.2 Retro.

I don't believe this.

Audio has worked on all of the old machines that I have tested so far.

Sometimes it comes up muted, but all that you have to do is bring up the mixer and find the correct checkbox (and maybe a level slider) to unmute it.

[Raman]

Puppy Linux entered my life sometime during the last quarter of the year 2003, if memory serves. My first Puppy was release 0.7 which I am still running on my most ancient computer, an excellent release indeed, and it began my affectionate affair with Puppy that has lasted up to this moment. Why? one might reasonably ask. Well, my following short history with Puppy will probably explain my continuing affection.

Puppy was designed to work for the technically unsophisticated, to work for the average Windows refugee, poor devils that they are, and to work on those sometimes elderly computers – sometimes very elderly computers that some users necessarily have to use. But work Puppy did, with its overall functionality frequently measured favorably by comparison with Windows 95 and Windows 98, along with Puppy’s overall operational reliability which no Windows release of any sort could approach. Period. Full stop. For example, I ran Puppy 0.7.4 continuously for almost twenty-two months straight until a power outage lasted long enough to outlast my creaking UPS, and consequently shut my Puppy down for want of electricity.

In late 2003 I began to give away bootable Puppy 0.7 disks to anyone who might benefit thereby, and a few who might not but were likely to pass Puppy on to someone who might. And I still do that. But then it occurred to me that my circumstances permitted me to collect discarded computers, broken computers, and parts of junked computers that I could recycle into operational computers if only a simple, efficient, and potent operating system could be found to rejuvenate those frequently underpowered boxes. Of course that OS was Puppy. Consequently, since late 2003, I have had to use no other OS but Puppy, although for some users I did load a dual boot system with a current Puppy release along with Windows 95 or Windows 98.

I have kept no records of the number of Puppy-powered recycled computers that I have given away over the years, but it certainly is a large number indeed. Which is to say, a large number of folks who have now spread the word about the amazing Puppy Linux operating system, a word spread so widely that once I was regaled with the astonishing feats of Puppy by a fellow (stranded) airline passenger who was forced -- like myself -- to take refuge in the nasty lobby of a tiny rural airport in deepest, darkest Sri Lanka, or Ceylon for those of you of a certain age. But in that setting this fellow waxed so lyrical about Puppy Linux, and waxed in such detail, that by the end of the monsoon rainstorm that all but swept the airport -- and us -- away, I knew enough about his experience with Puppy to reasonably assume that one of my reconstructed computers had somehow made its way into his life via an extended hand-to-hand transfer over an improbably large distance that I could never have imagined before meeting him. Ergo, Puppy has legs.

May I be permitted to say that if a small, efficient, effective, simple, powerful and flexible and largely intuitive computer operating system can bring happiness into the lives of an exceedingly wide swath of humanity, then Puppy Linux is that operating system. Along with a dialup internet connection, of course.

So, in summary, let me say thank you, sir, for your continuing efforts with Puppy. You might not realize how much your efforts, and the efforts of folks like you make in the lives of so many people worldwide. Actually worldwide, literally worldwide. Rural Sri Lanka worldwide.

Hail Puppy!

Raman

[Raman]

I went back and checked all of the machines again for muted audio, as you suggested. And you were right, they were muted and I missed it.

Sorry. But now the problem is not a problem.

Thank you.

Hail Puppy!

Raman