USB modems (analog)

[Bernd Walter]

On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 10:56:28AM -0400, Mike Tancsa wrote:
> At 05:36 AM 10/09/2005, Bernd Walter wrote:
> 
> >A used one seems to be the best choice these days.
> >Be carefull about ELSA/devolo modems, they had been using a fine
> >working Lucent chipset, but now are using an STM softmodem one.
> 
> Thanks for the heads up.  Of all the local devices I found, they 
> almost all used the STM softmodem chipset.

That's the same I'd found out, USR/3Com has something else, but it
is still a softmodem without documentation.
> 
> >They didn't change the product name.
> >USR/3Com is also bad these day, they have a new softmodem modell now.
> >Maybe Multitech is a choice - never tried them.
> 
> Same deal, STM.

:(

> >If you find one please let me know, I personally gave it up.
> 
> Assuming that programming info were available, how much time and 
> money would you guestimate it would take to develop a FreeBSD driver 
> for it ?  We *might* have some money available to fund it and would 
> let the driver be put into the tree.

There is a linux driver available for the STM chipset, which is
partly BSD licenced source and binary.
Don't remember the licence of the binary part.
The binary part is the modem itself and the AT-command parsing.
The remaning is transporting data.
It should be possible to port the driver, but it still contains
binary parts and of course there are performance implications for
a softmodem.
Doing the modulation/demodulation completely from scratch is hard work.
I personnaly already thought about building one using an embedded modem
together with an FTDI USB-uart.

-- 
B.Walter                   BWCT                http://www.bwct.de
bernd at bwct.de                                  info at bwct.de