[wellylug] External dial up modem on laptop

Carl Turney c.turney at orcon.net.nz
Thu Nov 13 19:53:57 NZDT 2008


Hi,

(Writing this on my desktop with the Fedora 5 hard disk in, because I 
can't even web browse on my desktop =or= laptop with Ubuntu 8.04.)

I don't use wireless or broadband. Like 50% of Kiwis I use dialup.  I'm 
happy with it.  The house I'm renting a room in is being sold soon, and 
the phone line is not even in my name - the guy with a landline doesn't 
even own a computer.

My new laptop's internal soft-modem couldn't be made to work, even with 
Jethro working on it for an hour on Monday.

So, I got an ATEN UC-232A USB to Serial converter today.  (Modern 
laptops don't believe in RS232.)  ATEN's driver disk (and their website) 
seem to think that the ONLY LINUX in the world is Red Hat.  No mention 
of Ubuntu.

On the other hand, at least one person on Ubuntu Forums thinks Ubuntu 
doesn't =need= any drivers for the adapter...
> I bought an ATEN UC-232A usb<->serial adapter.
> It works perfectly out of the box. No hardware problems whatsoever.
> Although its CDROM comes with driver source code for Linux, you
> don't need it because the relevant pl2303 driver is already
> included in modern linux kernels.

Nice.  When going into System, Administration, Network, (Unlocking), 
Connections, Point to Point Connection, Properties, Modem, Modem port, I 
don't see anything that looks like /dev/USBttys0 or some such.  Only see 
/dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 etc. which is weird, seeing as how the laptop 
doesn't have ANY serial ports.

So I just wing it, and assign /dev/ttyS0 to my external dial-up. And close.

Going right back into System, Administration, Network, and IT'S 
FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING! The Point to Point Connection is un-ticked again.

Going to terminal and running pon gives a one-line response ending in...
unrecognized option '/dev/modem'

Any hints out there?

Thanks, Carl



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