[wellylug] A real newbie needs help - internet connection

[Jonathan Harker]

Kadim Martana wrote:
> Thank you for all the helps and offers....
> 
> First, I am still curious with what I've done with my 'poor modem' - 
> downloading its driver and trying to install it into my mandrake (which 
> I am not succeed yet).
> 
> Second, does buying an external modem really outweigh those internal 
> modems? I'm affraid that I still need to download (surely?), keep the 
> driver into a cd, install it via terminal (that I don't quite 
> understand -..that's what happened when I tried the hsflinmodem).

The main advangtage with external modems is that they plug into the serial 
port. Since all operating systems know how to talk to a serial port, they all 
intrinsically know how to talk to an external modem. Linux just talks to the 
serial port at /dev/ttyS0 and the modem figures out the rest by itself. No 
drivers, kernel modules or other nonsense required!

Cheers,
Jonathan.