A.P. Lawrence

This article is from a FAQ concerning SCO operating systems. While some of the information may be applicable to any OS, or any Unix or Linux OS, it may be specific to SCO Xenix, Open Desktop or Openserver.

There is lots of Linux, Mac OS X and general Unix info elsewhere on this site: Search this site is the best way to find anything.

Serial Communications and UUCP

Will a Winmodem work?

No. It requires software drivers that aren't available (though SOME Winmodems can be made to work on Linux systems with special modules).

Get a real modem. Preferably, get an external modem, because:

• External modems are only a few dollars more than internal.
• Internal modems take up a slot that you might need someday for something else.
• Modems can get so confused that only shutting them off will clear their problem. You don't want to shut off your server when that happens, do you?
• If lightning comes down your phone line (it happens) and you have an internal modem, your whole computer is likely to be fried. With an external modem, you'll lose the modem, but probably not anything else.
• You can see what's going on with an external modem. You can see when the modem is receiving, transmitting, handshaking- much easier to diagnose problems.
• You can share an external modem between multiple computers either manually or by an A/B box- again this facilitates testing and is sometimes very convenient.
• When you upgrade your computer, swapping the modem is much easier.
• When you finally get your cable modem, DSL line or T1 :-), you might actually be able to sell that external modem, but used internal cards are near worthless.

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