Acer laptop, Lucent Win Modem & Red Hat 7.1 (kernel 2.4.2-ac)
Jari Oksanen May 21, 2001
Abstract
Get and compile ltmodem5.99b (or later), activate LT Win
Modem isa-pnp card and load the lt_serial module with three
forced parameters.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Problem description
3 Solution
3.1 Get and compile new ltmodem package
3.2 Activate the modem card
3.3 Load the driver modules
3.4 Finishing up: modem card activation at boot
1 Introduction
I had used LT Win Modem in my Acer Extensa 501T with Red
Hat 6.2, but after upgrading to Red Hat 7.1 I could not
make the modem work. My interpretation (which is subjective
and may be wrong) is that either kernel or /sbin/isapnp
changed so that they failed to activate the modem card with
correct parameters and so the modem driver kernel module
could not be loaded. Even if this interpretation is wrong,
the following procedure corrected the situation for me and
got me wired again.
2 Problem description
There are two isa-pnp cards in my Acer:
[jari@erable html]$ dmesg | grep -i pnp isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards... isapnp: Card 'YAMAHA OPL3-SAx Audio System' isapnp: Card 'LT Win Modem' isapnp: 2 Plug & Play cards detected total
However, only the sound card is activated correctly, like
you will see by looking at the /proc/isapnp. If you try
to load the the modem driver (/sbin/modprobe lt_serial),
you will get an error. Alternatively, you may get some steps
further but when dialing, you will get NO DIALTONE.
3 Solution
3.1 Get and compile new ltmodem package
You need ltmodem-5.99b.tar.gz (or later?). I got mine from
[http://www.heby.de/ltmodem/||http://www.heby.de/ltmodem/],
but there may be other places. You may follow links from
[http://linmodems.org/||http://linmodems.org/]. It is important
that the version is at least 5.99b, since you need to give
three forced parameters and the older versions supported
only two. Compile the driver following the instructions (in 1ST-READ).
In Red Hat, you need to install kernel-source package: kernel-headers
package is not sufficient. You need only install the package:
ltmodem installation script will find what it needs without
further configuration.
3.2 Activate the modem card
Generate an /etc/isapnp.conf file using /sbin/pnpdump > /etc/isapnp.conf.
Then you need to decomment to get the desired configuration,
so that you have finally something like this:
(CONFIGURE ACRdb19/256 (LD 0
(IO 0 (SIZE 8) (BASE 0x02e8) (CHECK))
(INT 0 (IRQ 3 (MODE +E))) (IO 1 (SIZE 8) (BASE 0x0108) (CHECK)) (NAME "ACRdb19/256[0]{LT Win Modem }" ) (ACT Y) )) # End tag... Checksum 0x00 (OK)
The soundcard is already active, so you should not activate
that. The choices above are all the first alternatives given by
pnpdump except IO 1: pnpdump suggests BASE 0x0100, but that
is reserved by the sound card; the alternative BASE 0x0108
is the same as used by Windows and automatically configured
earlier in Red Hat 6.2. Then you should issue /sbin/isapnp and see something like
this:
[root@erable ltmodem-5.99b]# isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf Board 1 has Identity 0f ff ff ff ff 00 08 a8 65: YMH0800
Serial No -1 [checksum 0f] Board 2 has Identity 02 00 00 01 00 19 db 72 04: ACRdb19
Serial No 256 [checksum 02] ACRdb19/256[0]{LT Win Modem }: Ports 0x2E8 0x108; IRQ3 ---
Enabled OK
It seems to report to have done what you asked for. I am
not quite sure, though, since /proc/isapnp reads now: Card 2 'ACRdb19:LT Win Modem' PnP version 1.0 Product version
0.1 Logical device 0 'HSM0a19:Unknown' Supported registers 0x2 Device is active
Active port 0xffff,0xffff,0xffff,0xffff,0xffff,0xffff,0xffff,0xffff
Active IRQ 255 [0xff],255 [0xff]
Active ports and active IRQs do not look correct to my taste.
3.3 Load the driver modules
It seems that lt_modem driver is unable to detect ports or
IRQs, and so all three parameters must be given as forced
parameters issuing # /sbin/modprobe lt_modem Forced=3,0x108,0x2e8
Then you may check that the modem is set up using /sbin/setserial
-avg /dev/modem (which should now point to /dev/ttyLT0).
If everything is fine, you should be able to dial.
If everything works, you should add the option line to /etc/modules.conf.
When you install the driver modules, installation script
(autoload) will edit /etc/modules.conf file and add some
hints for parametrization. I have added the non-commented
options line in the following in my /etc/modules.conf: # lt_drivers: autoloading and insertion parameter usage alias char-major-62 lt_serial # lt_drivers: autoloading and insertion parameter usage options lt_modem Forced=3,0x108,0x2e8 ### <-- my line # section for lt_drivers ends
After this, the driver module will be loaded automatically
when dialing.
3.4 Finishing up: modem card activation at boot
Even now the modem card will not be activated at boot (may
be related to bad ports and IRQs). However, you can activate
the card from rc.local which is executed after all the other
init scripts. I have the following line in /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
/sbin/isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf
Now the card will be as ready as it can be, and the modem
driver modules will be loaded on demand when you start your
dial script.
|