Hello.
I have a PCI USRobotics Modem, model 5671 "Dial-up 56K PCIFaxModem"
and I am trying to mount some kind of fax-server with Hylafax. But I'm
not able to make this modem work. I found out, I don't remember how,
it has a Conexant HSF chip, so I installed Connexant HSF drivers. Now
kernel seems to discover it when booting, and it also apears on lspci.

Though, I cannot connect to it with minicom, nor cu commands, and
programs such as efax-gtk doesn't neither work.

Here are pasted two pieces from dmesg and lspci outputs:


gaguilar@thunder:~$ dmesg | grep -i modem
[ 32.111710] ttySHSF0 at I/O 0xa000 (irq = 21) is a Conexant HSF
softmodem (PCI-14f1:2f30-14f1:2003)

(there are no other dmesg lines about that)


gaguilar@thunder:~$ lspci -v

02:00.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k Data/Fax Modem (rev
01)
Subsystem: Conexant Unknown device 2003
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
Memory at eb000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
I/O ports at a000 [size=8]


As you can see from dmesg output, it seems that kernel detects the
device and assigns it to /dev/ttySHSF0. This file exists.


If anyone does know certainly that this modem can't work on linux
please tell and I will report my boss :)

Thank you very much !

mailtogenis@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello.
> I have a PCI USRobotics Modem, model 5671 "Dial-up 56K PCIFaxModem"
> and I am trying to mount some kind of fax-server with Hylafax. But I'm
> not able to make this modem work. I found out, I don't remember how,
> it has a Conexant HSF chip, so I installed Connexant HSF drivers. Now
> kernel seems to discover it when booting, and it also apears on lspci.
>
> Though, I cannot connect to it with minicom, nor cu commands, and
> programs such as efax-gtk doesn't neither work.
>
> Here are pasted two pieces from dmesg and lspci outputs:
>
>
> gaguilar@thunder:~$ dmesg | grep -i modem
> [ 32.111710] ttySHSF0 at I/O 0xa000 (irq = 21) is a Conexant HSF
> softmodem (PCI-14f1:2f30-14f1:2003)

It's a "softmodem", also known as a "winmodem", which isn't a modem at all,
but a limited sound card with an RJ-11 jack, which works as a modem through
emulation with the included Windows-only software.

For some winmodems, "basic" functionality is provided through third party
software, but don't count on getting "advanced" functionality like fax
working for most winmodems. You don't just need a driver, but emulation
software that interfaces with the drivers and pretends to be a modem.

One site to check out is http://linmodems.org/

The main reason why winmodems were so poupular is price. They're far
cheaper than modems, hardware-wise. An additional benefit to PC
manufacturers was that they could always be "upgraded" to new protocols
(like V92) or compressions (like V92bis) simply by changing the software.
The main drawbacks were that you depended on the software, and that the
software required spare CPU time, where a bogged down computer would lose
connectivity (because of running out of juice to do the modem emulation),
and the emulation software would often eat quite a bit of CPU juice itself,
slowing other things down. For browsing a web page, where the user
generally waits while it loads, it doesn't matter much. But if playing an
online game, it could be rather crippling.

Regards,
--
*Art