[NCLUG] Another simple FTP question

[Michael Dwyer]

> > Its usually a bit worse than that.  The sound card /is/ the modem.
You
> > make the soundcard generate modem-like sounds, then pipe it through
a
> > little bit of glue circuitry, and you have a cheap modem.  The
problem
> > is that you work out the processor trying to create modem-sounding
> > waveforms for the sound card.
> >
> > Welcome to the world of Winmodems!  You might have noticed that
Printers
> > are getting cheap, too?  Instead of the printer having a brain, the
> > computer is expected to do all the work.  The printer is little more
> > than the mechanism.  Again, it makes it cheap, but it makes them
hard on
> > the processor, and a nightmare to write drivers for.
>
> Hmmm, I thought that "winmodems" were a more general term for certain
> plug-and-play thingies that are practically inconfgurable in Linux.

In general.  I would say that a Winmodem is any modem that offloads its
operation onto the host processor.  Any modem that is not
self-contained.  Its not so much the plug-and-playness of the modems, so
much as the not-a-real-serial-port issue.

> I've dealt with PCI cards which evidently fall into this category.  I
> HATE them.  But then, I might be confused, because the site below
seems
> to define "winmodems" differently.  I've also noticed that ISA modems
> are a lot more expensive these days.

I bought a non-winmodem PCI card from US Robotics.  The funny thing is,
they sell non-winmodems to windows users as "built in processor -- frees
up more CPU for your games!"  It works great, so long as you are running
2.3 or above... and I'm not.  And the latest serial driver doesn't
backport to 2.2.18 yet, sooo...

Modems suck.  I want ethernet everywhere!!

Oh, and the price of ISA cards is probably a supply/demand kind of thing
more than anything.  Have you noticed that pc133 memory is cheaper than
pc100?  You can put pc133 memory into a pc100 machine...

> And yes, I have noticed that certain modern printers are becoming
> nightmarish to deal with, especially with PS jobs, and/or over a LAN.

There's a linux printing site, similar to the linmodems site.  It
summarizes how useless certain printers are.  It used to be that any PS
printer was safe -- now, it appears that some printers that SAY they are
postscript are just sent with ghostscript attached to the Windows
drivers...

> GRR.  We did just buy a Lexmark Z-52, which actually has Linux drivers
> and even a GUI installation program - Not bad.  Setting up the remote
> lpd wasn't quite so simple, though.

I'm trying to set one of those up right now... Mostly the problem is
that I seem to lack a parallel port... and I'm certainly not trying to
futz with USB!

> > http://linmodems.org/ - for great justice!
>
> What you say!!  I've already seen this site.  Still, I don't know if I
> want to deal with it (this is a "favor" for a friend, and I have too
> many "friends" asking for "favors" like this, resulting in massive
time

Winmodems aren't worth your sanity.  You/he would probably be happier
with a real modem, but then you have to go out /shopping/ for a 'real'
modem.  And that is just as large of a nightmare...