On Tuesday 07 January 2003 04:56 am, Andy Micklethwaite wrote: > > I've been on this list for 2 days. I'm a newbie to MD, trying to convert > from Windoze - Among many other things I've not got the SM56 modem going > yet - guess why! <BG>. > > However I use a dial up connection, and my access time has gone up an order > of magnitude with downloading 500+ emails from this list in 2 days. I > haven't looked at the percentage of OTs to 'real' stuff, but it's not at > all helpful to newbies. There appear to be helpful hints in there but > finding them is not easy. I wonder how many other newbies are being put off > by the sheer volume of OT. I am certainly wondering whether continuing here > is worthwhile - the noise to signal ratio is too high at present. I shall > persist for a short time to see what the norm is - or even who<G> > > Regards, Andy.
Andy: Good point, and well put. As Anne Wilson has already pointed out, the OT traffic over the past few days has been unusually heavy. It's the price of an active, self-moderating list, but the upside is that most responses are timely and usually helpful. RTFMs, spams and flames are few and far between here; not all lists can make that claim. IMHO, getting some occasional OT stuff is more than a fair trade for that kind of behavior. Also, there is always going to be more traffic on this list in comparison to other distributions' lists because Mandrake delineates its lists by general interest -- newbie, expert, cooker -- whereas the others segregate their lists by topic -- installation, configuration, networking, etc. My preference is to monitor fewer lists and do my own sorting. As for your SM56 winmodem: While I can't give you any direct help because I've never dealt with the beasts, I can give you three winmodem links that others have found useful: linmodems.org www.idir.net/~gromitkc/winmodem.html www.fcc/gov/oet/fccid/ (A quick way to identify exactly which modem -- or any other piece of hardware -- from the FCC number. You'll need to know the manufacturer and specific model number to determine if drivers are available; SM56 identifies the chipset, but these chips are used by several manufacturers, and not all of them will have Linux drivers. If your manufacturer does not offer a suitable driver, you may be able to use a driver from another manufacturer. From a search of the table at the ~gromitkc site for "SM56", most are marked as WM (not good), and a few are marked LM (there's hope).) You can also check the newbie list archives for previous postings re your modem (and there have been some): http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/archives/newbie/ marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-newbie&r=1&w=2 (easier to use, IMHO) HTH. If you need some more help, holler. And stick around. You'll find that it's worth digging through the noise to get the signals. Norm was the fat guy on Cheers. A hero of mine. He's never posted here. -- cmg
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