Re: beware the IDE cd-rom drive of march...

[Jon Sanders <tanaesdragon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> <snippets>
> Oh, sorry.  It's most definitely a real modem, I made sure of that.

And that is my area of difficulty regarding hardware and parental investments...

If I may digress for a bit. ;)

I am blessed (read: cursed) with a winmodem, and am frustrated by the irony of the
rest of my situation (to skip the longwinded story, pass over the next three lines).
It goes as follows:

My father's company decided to set up a video conferencing system on our home PC so
that he might conference to those places that he needs to do that sort of thing to.
They installed the PictureTel Live200 system, which is not good at all. It, for some
reason, will not work under Win98 (only 95). It will not work with our terribly buggy
old Win95a version. Or rather, would not. I did manage to get it to behave. Aside from
taking up my last remaining free IRQ with its internal card, this equipment is now
sitting unused on the desk. In order to facilitate videoconferencing, the company paid
to have an ISDN line installed and is paying the monthly bill.

"Yay!" I thought.

Almost. I have had no luck so far convincing the 'rents to get an ISDN ISP, despite
the fact that it will require no more money than our existing ISP plus extra phone
line. Despite connectivity speed, ISDN is attractive to me because of the distinct
possibility of getting an external, serial port ISDN modem -- and, hence, fast
connection under Linux.

So, in my roundabout way of telling things, I am left with a winmodem in my machine, a
beautifully thick RJ-45 cable carrying ISDN lying useless behind the desk, a 14.4
modem that I can not install for lack of IRQs... And no Linux 'net.

Any suggestions as to means of convincing the 'rents to capitulate to my
oh-so-reasonable desires, freeing an IRQ so I can have 2 modems, or ISDN with Linux in
general?

-Jon, who does indeed digress.