> > Hey! > > > > Thanx a lot first of all! > > > > Anytime i CAN write something myself - i do. I can go as low as networking > > code > > or pseudodevice driver. But i am at loss when it comes to hardware (and > > within > > my scope of work etc. i doubt i will ever learn this stuff). Thats why i > > pleaded for help. > > > > I volonteer to be your first alpha-tester. I have this modem > > blaster thing. It is PCI and it has a UART. I was going to sell it > > and shell out lots of money for USRobotics 56K ISA real modem. BTW > > they call it "legacy" modem - i think the general direction is such > > that PCI will be the only kind available very soon... > > This is pretty much untrue, because not all applications (industrial > applications) for modems have a PC to talk to, so it's totally > impossible for conventional modems to go away. I used to make my living > tending large banks of modems, and not all applications are 56K even, > because they are only justified if you have a very large modem pool. > > I think you're panicking prematurely, Ugen. You're also checking the > very bottom of the market, and you're exaggerating (in your comment > about shelling out lot's of cash for a conventional modem) the cost of > a regular modem. Things just aren't that desperate. > > It's possible the trend is in a direction I don't like, but I'll still > keep my external conventional modem. It's 33.6, not 56, which means > that my friends can dial into my system, which they can't do if it's a > 56K. That's very nice sometimes. >
Well, he's partially true. We're looking at mass buying several thousand PCI modems. The cost for a non-winmodem model is about 3x the Winmodem style. (You can buy winmodems very cheap, since everyone is making them now. You can't buy non-winmodem's cheap because only a few are doing it, and they now charge a premium for this). Another issue is the upcoming death of ISA. Several of Intel's next chipsets don't support ISA at all, making this a somewhat timely problem. Kevin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message