Upgrading From Windows XP

I’ve got a friend who’s currently in hospital. He has a four-year-old Acer
Aspire that came with Windows XP, and he’s not in a financial position to
buy a new machine. I entertained him during one visit with the games on my
Eee 701 (running Ubuntu Jaunty). He was so taken that he accepted my
suggestion to take his PC and put the same system on it (dual-booting with
Windows, of course).

I got that done a couple of nights ago. Everything worked fine, and he even
gets some 3D graphics effects now. But I couldn’t get the on-board modem to
work (he’s still on dialup Internet). Turns out it’s a Motorola SM56, which
is a “winmodem�, so no Linux drivers. Just for fun, I tried searching
Microsoft’s “Windows Seven Compatibility Center�, but no mention of it
there, either. So Linux is offering him at least as good an upgrade path as
Windows.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

In message <hbqqo1$td6$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> Turns out it’s a Motorola SM56, which is a “winmodem�, so no Linux
> drivers.

Looks like others have got it to work
<http://hardware4linux.info/component/28292/>.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Somewhere on teh intarwebs geoff wrote:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> I've got a friend who's currently in hospital. He has a four-year-old
>> Acer Aspire that came with Windows XP,
>
> Well no wonder he's in hospital.
>
>> and he's not in a financial
>> position to buy a new machine. I entertained him during one visit
>> with the games on my Eee 701 (running Ubuntu Jaunty). He was so taken
>> that he accepted my suggestion to take his PC and put the same system
>> on it (dual-booting with Windows, of course).
>>
>> I got that done a couple of nights ago. Everything worked fine, and
>> he even gets some 3D graphics effects now. But I couldn't get the
>> on-board modem to work (he's still on dialup Internet). Turns out
>> it's a Motorola SM56, which is a "winmodem", so no Linux drivers.
>> Just for fun, I tried searching Microsoft's "Windows Seven
>> Compatibility Center", but no mention of it there, either. So Linux
>> is offering him at least as good an upgrade path as Windows.
>
> That's nice.

LOL, yeah, like Larry has a friend! Likely he volunteers to visit lonely
people in hospital who're bed-bound so they can't get up and leave. I'm not
surprised that he was pleased when Larry started playing with his netbook
and feigned interest to keep him on it.
--
Shaun.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.

~misfit~

In message <hbqqo1$td6$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> But I couldn’t get the on-board modem to work (he’s still on dialup
> Internet). Turns out it’s a Motorola SM56, which is a “winmodem�, so no
> Linux drivers.

Was able to find and install the slmodem package, so this is now working as
well. Initializing this requires loading a couple of kernel modules (ungrab-
winmodem and slamr) and starting a daemon, but I can set up a simple script
icon he can double-click to automate all this later.

Still having a problem connecting to his actual dialup account at Slingshot,
though. I figured out that pppd tries different authentication methods, but
their server simply ignores PAP authentication requests, so it keeps
repeatedly trying them and then gives up. Setting "refuse-pap" in the pppd
options gets it to try CHAP authentication, and in the syslog I can see it
receiving a challenge and sending a response. And then a few more LCP
negotiations. And nothing more.

(Adding "refuse-mschap" made no difference, while "refuse-chap" stopped it
doing any authentication at all. So I guess this means Slingshot support
CHAP and not MS-CHAP.)

I get the feeling Slingshot have only tested their service with Windows PPP
clients, and nothing else.

> Just for fun, I tried searching Microsoft’s “Windows Seven Compatibility
> Center�, but no mention of it there, either. So Linux is offering him at
> least as good an upgrade path as Windows.

Worth repeating for the trolls.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro