In praise of winmodems.

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Gert Doering writes:
 > Hi,
 > 
 > On Thu, Dec 24, 1998 at 01:46:16PM -0000, Russell Nelson wrote:
 > > In principle, a winmodem with Open-Source(tm) drivers should be better 
 > > than most modems on the market, because we could fix it when there's a 
 > > problem.  Yes, part of the driver would need to be OS-dependent.  Part 
 > > of *every* portable Unix program needs to be OS-dependent.
 > 
 > Is there *any* Winmodem with Open Source drivers?

What's a winmodem?  It's got one bit of output to go off-hook, one bit 
of input to detect ring, a codec, and some bus logic to cause samples
to be gathered at a certain rate (14.4K samples/sec) and uploaded at
the same rate.  Where's the big secret there?  Surely there's a
winmodem manufacturer willing to document their hardware?  Or one
which uses a standard chipset for which a datasheet is available?
Even if all you did was interface it to vgetty, with no fax
capability, it would still be useful.

Granted, you wouldn't want more than one in your machine.  Within that 
assumption, they're a programmer's dream: give me the hardware and get 
out of my way.

-- 
-russ nelson <rn-sig@crynwr.com>  http://crynwr.com/~nelson
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