Puppy 5.5 can't connect via dial-up

[nic007]

Yes, do that but don't that this one "bad" experience with puppy put you off. It's a nice little system to play around with. Best is to try puppy on CD or to use frugal installs. I have 5 operating systems on my old computer and I use them all by way of dual-booting. I have Windows XP Pro on my ntfs partition (that's my main system) and Windows 98 SE, Puppy 412, Puppy 431, Wary Puppy 539 on the FAT partition. All the Puppies are frugal installs.

I knew going into this that there may be an issue of connecting via a soft modem. I had hoped when I saw that the auto-detect did recognize my modem that I was in luck but that's how the cookie crumbles. I won't give up just yet. I'll keep digging and use my other laptop to do the research.
Thanks again.[/quote]

I recommend that you try Puppy 412 first. Definitely worthwhile

[cthisbear]

kevhaw:

Barry Kauler creator of Puppy lived in outback Western Australia

and only had dialup.

To upload his various Puppies he had to drive to Perth
and back to Penjori....370kms each way.

So if anyone in Linux had dialup support...it was Barry.

Try something like Puppy 4.31 etc.

Get back to us mate....whether it is a good or bad result.

Sure you can install XP. But maybe enjoy puppy.

Chris.

[kevhaw]

kevhaw:

Barry Kauler creator of Puppy lived in outback Western Australia

and only had dialup.

To upload his various Puppies he had to drive to Perth
and back to Penjori....370kms each way.

So if anyone in Linux had dialup support...it was Barry.

Try something like Puppy 4.31 etc.

Get back to us mate....whether it is a good or bad result.

Sure you can install XP. But maybe enjoy puppy.

Chris.

Barry sounds like a heroic person in my opinion. I will try my luck with the external USB Modem that moat recommended in an earlier post.
My problem is I have had no formal education in computers. I do catch on fast and am a little intuitive so I can get by usually.
I'll post my results with the external modem after I get my hands on one.
Again, thanks for advice/replies.
Kevin

[nic007]

Hi, Kevhaw. Once you have that dail-up connection working on either windows or a puppy, you should seriously consider using Opera Mini Browser as your browser with that slow connection. It's fast and saves massively on bandwidth/data usage. It's of course a mobile application but you can run it on a desktop/laptop. You will need to install Java Runtime Environment, Microemulator and the Opera Mini files to get it to work. I actually use this as my day to day browser and it's great.

[Moat]

I'll post my results with the external modem after I get my hands on one.

I hope it works out well for you, as it has for me on the four different computers I've tried it on. Another plus is that it has worked for me on a few other Linux distros, as well (Mint, Lubuntu, Xubuntu) - distros that have virtually no onboard modem driver support at all (that I could reasonably find). Fortunately, though, those distros did have available the needed dialup tools - wvdial and gnomePPP... which took a little work (setting permissions, mainly) to sort it all out - but ended up working great with the USB modem.

And anyways, from what I've gathered - if your onboard modem's chipset is a Conexant, the Puppy driver is based on the free Linuxant driver - which is purposely crippled to a lower transfer rate by Linuxant. If you buy the un-crippled version - for about 20$ US, IIRC (i.e. about the cost of a USB modem) - you then still have to jump through the hoops to attempt to get the driver installed and functioning properly on your system.

Instead, I just went ahead and bought the little Trendnet USB modem - and haven't looked back.

Good luck - keep us posted.

Bob

[kevhaw]

I'll post my results with the external modem after I get my hands on one.

I hope it works out well for you, as it has for me on the four different computers I've tried it on. Another plus is that it has worked for me on a few other Linux distros, as well (Mint, Lubuntu, Xubuntu) - distros that have virtually no onboard modem driver support at all (that I could reasonably find). Fortunately, though, those distros did have available the needed dialup tools - wvdial and gnomePPP... which took a little work (setting permissions, mainly) to sort it all out - but ended up working great with the USB modem.

And anyways, from what I've gathered - if your onboard modem's chipset is a Conexant, the Puppy driver is based on the free Linuxant driver - which is purposely crippled to a lower transfer rate by Linuxant. If you buy the un-crippled version - for about 20$ US, IIRC (i.e. about the cost of a USB modem) - you then still have to jump through the hoops to attempt to get the driver installed and functioning properly on your system.

Instead, I just went ahead and bought the little Trendnet USB modem - and haven't looked back.

Good luck - keep us posted.

Bob

Thanks Bob for recommending the Trendnet usb modem. Once I was able to figure out how to erase the stored info the Dell's own modem, it worked GREAT!
Now I just need to do research and learn about wary puppy So far I have just figured out how to get the cd player to work.
I didn't bother reinstalling XP as I have two newer laptops with Windows 7 installed. I just wanted to find something that the old Dell Inspiron could be used for, other than recycling.
I am also curious about Linux in general and it will be fun to do research and see what I can learn. Looks like a steep learning curve.
One thing I am curious about... is it possible to install a brouser on wary puppy and surf the net like windows, or do you need to use the website mirror grabber app... the one where you type in the url of the webpage that you want.
Again, thanks for the great advice guys, and thanks to Bob for recommending specifically the Trendnet gizmo!
Kevin

[Moat]

... it worked GREAT!

Yay! Glad you got things up and connected!

I am also curious about Linux in general and it will be fun to do research and see what I can learn. Looks like a steep learning curve.

Me too (curious). It does seem a bit steep, but IMO that's part of the fun - always something new to learn/do. Like break stuff. I think Puppy is as good a place to jump into Linux as any, being it's overall a little less complex as some of the bigger distros, auto logs us in as "root" (administrator) so we're not constantly getting nagged with a password prompt as we go about our business of breaking things ( ), and it's easy to backup the system if we irreversibly screw things up (by backing up savefiles using the Pupsave Hot Backup utility). A fun platform to tweak, customize and learn!

One thing I am curious about... is it possible to install a brouser on wary puppy and surf the net like windows...

I believe your Wary Puppy should already have a web browser installed... likely Seamonkey... under the "Internet" menu category?

Bob

[kevhaw]

... it worked GREAT!

Yay! Glad you got things up and connected!

I am also curious about Linux in general and it will be fun to do research and see what I can learn. Looks like a steep learning curve.

Me too (curious). It does seem a bit steep, but IMO that's part of the fun - always something new to learn/do. Like break stuff. I think Puppy is as good a place to jump into Linux as any, being it's overall a little less complex as some of the bigger distros, auto logs us in as "root" (administrator) so we're not constantly getting nagged with a password prompt as we go about our business of breaking things ( ), and it's easy to backup the system if we irreversibly screw things up (by backing up savefiles using the Pupsave Hot Backup utility). A fun platform to tweak, customize and learn!

One thing I am curious about... is it possible to install a brouser on wary puppy and surf the net like windows...

I believe your Wary Puppy should already have a web browser installed... likely Seamonkey... under the "Internet" menu category?

Bob

Thanks again Bob. For sure the seamonkey browser did work. It seems to be affiliated with google search. Of course dial-up is extremely slow but it's fun to be free of the XP warnings and be able to do some basic stuff with my old Dell.
Kevin