On Fri, 24 May 2019 16:17:02 -0400 Felix Miata mrmazda@earthlink.net wrote:
Dan Youngquist composed on 2019-05-17 09:08 (UTC-0700):
Felix Miata wrote:
Target is a Vaio laptop (not mine) with 2.2GHz dual core with 2GB RAM and GM965 14" 1280x800 video. I have an openSUSE maintenance installation (only IceWM for X) on it now, which will stay.
One problem that I didn't see anyone mention, that you may already be aware of: The modem in that Vaio is almost certainly a winmodem. Most of those> can't be made to work with Linux,
Actually it is one that ostensibly is supported, technically a high definition audio device.
and for those that can, it's more trouble than it's worth.
I wholeheartedly agree. I tried by starting with basics, determining whether the modem could work at all. My support mailing list discuss-subscribe@linmodems.org sub attempt was returned to sender. ScanModem found a 14f1:2c06 High Definition Audio device that should be supported as a modem, but underlying support for modems in distros seems to have died through lack maintenance required for newer foundational software versions, e.g. glibc, gcc, etc. The driver has to be built, and automatic building by installing the .deb (Debian 10) or .rpm (openSUSE 15.1) fails with "C compiler cannot create executables" on the cli and in config.log. In Debian, every attempt to use apt or aptitude for anything since trying to install the .deb results in "E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)" on account of alsa-driver-linuxant producing exit status 77 in post processing. e.g.:
apt install wvdial
Bumbling around on the linuxant homepage for a while identifies them as the weak link in all this--they stopped developing the driver about ten years ago, and never upstreamed it. They say the driver you need "works under 2.6.16 or newer kernels", which probably means you need a kernel version V where 2.6.16 <= V < 3.0. I don't know if any current distro carries a kernel that old.
At this point, having your guy hit garage sales and junk shops to check for old PCMCIA or even external modems looks like a better bet.
E. Liddell