What about controllerless "hardware" modems?

[Marin Krkac]

I have an internal "hardware" modem. When I bought it they said it was a
hardware modem and it said so on the box too. It has an Intel/Ambient
chipset, or more precisely, as the windows driver says, Intel 536ep. But
I found out just a few days ago that it's not actually a real hardware
modem. It has a DSP but it's controllerless - that part is in software.
It's also called a HAM modem (a Host Accelerated Modem). There is a
linux driver but I think it's only partially open-source. Is there any
chance this modem might work under FreeBSD?

Buying a new modem could be an option, but now that I've found out this
"hardware" modem isn't exactly what I thought it would be, I'm confused.
Besides soft modems, the only cheaper models I could buy are all
contorollerless. There are some cheaper external models, but it says
that they are also built around the Intel/Ambient chipset, so I don't
see how they could be any better, even though they're external (that's
really confusing me - so far I thought that there was no way you could
go wrong with an external modem).

The only thing that's left are the expensive models, like US Robotics.
But they are a little too expensive for me, and I really don't see a
point in running FreeBSD without a modem.

Any advice would be really appreciated.
Thanks.