The good ol' serial modems

I recently bought a new laptop, a Dell Latitude D630, which is equipped with an internal modem, with a Conexant chipset. You can find the Linux drivers for this modem at linuxant.com, but you need to pay a registration fee for getting the full speed for these drivers (I did this in the past for my previous laptops). However, Dell provides its users with free Conexant drivers for its laptops! Unfortunately, for the moment, these drivers do not seem to be updated for the Kubuntu 7.10 I installed on my laptop.

Well, I have ADSL at my place, but sometimes, I work in places where ADSL is not available, and I can rely only on the old telephone line, that's why I'd need to use the modem.

This time, I decided not to pay for the drivers, and wait for Dell to update its drivers... but I still needed to access the Internet through the telephone. I then remembered I still had an old external serial 56k modem... well... I connected, and configured it with kppp and in a moment I was surfing the Internet under Linux :-)


Ah! the good ol' serial modems! Ready to be used! Not like those fake soft(win)modems... and all those flashing lights :-)