Hi all,

I would like to use a 56k traditional modem from MorphOS, for some traditional dial-up BBSing.

I have an external modem which I would have liked to have used, but from reading forums here it looks like the PL2303 USB>RS232 drivers in Poseidon might be buggy and that it might be a safer bet to find a supported USB external modem (neater too, I suppose).

Two questions then:

1) Has anyone got a PL2303 adaptor working on MorphOS for the purposes of linking to an external modem?
2) Or has anyone used an external USB modem from MorphOS, and if so can they recommend a model?

Many thanks!

I think the actual hard part will be getting MiamiDX to run since our Netstack's modem support has been deprecated. OK, you can probably get things to work with Netstack and netconfig, but it'll involve a bit of tinkering.

Remember to post here once you get past the hw issues and I'll try to have a look at the stuff required to bring a modem up...

The USB-serial driver isn't very well tested (because nobody has really used it), but the serial driver may be fine. I have actually (just once) used a dialup modem with my Pegasos 1 (using Miami, pre-netstack days). I also once had a router with a serial port with dialup modem support for backup.

I once upon a time used my 56k modem as a backup if my cable internet went down, which it did fairly often for a whole day. I gave that up when 3G came along, mid naughties, along with everyone else.

You don't have a true serial port, I'm guessing?

Be warned, getting a 56k modem working again on any system these days is not easy.

[ Edited by KennyR 04.07.2019 - 15:35 ]

Quote:

I could be totally wrong Jaca, but I believe Netstack never supported PPP protocol or CHAP authentication, even though was based on a stack that did.

You may try Roadshow 68k...

Thank you all for your replies.

I didn't think I needed to consider Miami/Roadshow TCP-IP stuff. I don't want to do dial-up internet (do ISPs still offer that?) - just connect to dial-up BBSes.

If you use a program like NComm, or BBS software like Max's BBS, you point the software to the serial device, and that then sends data directly to/from serial. You can generally change the settings in these programs so they use something other than serial.device - e.g. if you had a Zorro multi-serial port card which might have its own serial device.

I was thinking that Poseidon would, when happily linked to a USB modem or a PL2303 adaptor, funnel the data to serial.device or an equivalent, that a serial program could then use - happily oblivious to the USB aspect behind the scenes.

Well, you probably could dial up to a non-internet BBS from a standard serial terminal if you know how to enter all the modem AT strings and commands and the modem accepts them.

Can't help you there I'm afraid. All quite a bit before my time.

Edit: But you're right... even a USB to serial adapter should be able to do this as long as you set the correct baud and bit format in the serial terminal.

[ Edited by KennyR 04.07.2019 - 20:43 ]

One thing regarding modems,

Some MorphOS releases ago i added support for switching 3g modems to cdcacm.class using modeswitch data file:
http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/device_reference.txt
It still needs dialer but if you have working dialer, you can connect to the internet .......
without dialer you can talk to device using Term and AT commands.

Very interesting! I didn't know such things existed. This will be another avenue to explore if I don't have any luck with a phone line connection.

Quote:

What about telser?

Quote:

I've used telser before when wanting to have telnet connections into older serial software. Got it working on MorphOS actually. This time though, I want to avoid the internet part and re-establish a serial connection to a modem to allow over the phone communications. Thank you for taking the time to get the link etc! Great software.

Well, I am now the proud owner of a cdcacm usb modem - a MultiTech MultiModem ZBA.

I have tested it on Linux where it gives me a serial device to use. Strangely, the modem lights only
come on once Linux and the modem are happily talking to each other but this does happen and reading the manual everything seems to be working as expected with the modem.

Trying it on MorphOS, I'm not sure what's happening. Posiedon can definitely see it. Here is the screenshot of the Devices page, with the modem listed as TUSB3410.

Grab.jpg

The state as you can see is 'Running' but with a question mark icon.
Also, it doesn't appear to have established a binding to cdcacm.class as I would expect. Note also the warnings about 'Unable to load modeswitch data file...'.

Here's the info page.

Grab2.jpg

I have tried to force binding cdcacm.class to the device, but that failed.

I can see that cdcacm.class should give me a usbmodem.device which I can then talk to. I've looked in MOSSYS:Devs/ and can't see any file with that name although I can find the cdcacm.class file in MOSSYS:Classes/.

Not sure if there's anything else I can try to get them talking to each other. What I would ultimately expect is the presence of usbmodem.device which I can then use in place of serial.device in various serial programs, e.g. a terminal program.

Any ideas of what to try next? Thanks!


[ Edited by Ginger1 24.07.2019 - 12:22 ]

> cdcacm.class should give me a usbmodem.device which I can then talk to.
> I've looked in MOSSYS:Devs/ and can't see any file with that name

The device driver is not supposed to be a real file you find on a volume but created on the fly in memory.

It does not look like a cdcacm device at all.

Quote:

UMTS Sticks for example are running in mass storage node and you need to switch them to cdcacm mode. This was made to provide drivers for a very stupid os

These devices can be switched to Modem mode simply by ejecting the „CD“. Also there is a tools to make this switch permanent. Nowadays the switching is done by udev rules.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_3G_Modem

Maybe it is the same with your modem. I have no idea what kind of file poseidon expects.

So it seems that this MultiTech MultiModem ZBA has its own drivers in Linux so modeswitching is done by kernel module. Current cdcacm.class implementation uses device_reference.txt which is used also on Linux for mode switching although i didn't see line with switch bytes for this modem (so probably linux kernel mod takes care of switching).

path for device reference.txt should be set in cdcacm.class configuration window

[ Edited by zukow 25.07.2019 - 12:14 ]

I tried searching on the Linux machine for the device reference file, but wasn't able to track down (thinking this modem information might reside there).

I also tried passing the device reference.txt file to the configuration file, but to no avail.

Last thing I can try by the looks of things is to search online to see if I can find the switch bytes. At least now with the device_reference txt file I've got a shopping list of other modems which hopefully will work.

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Here's the data sheet for it which states it's cdcacm compliant. I did wonder though!

https://www.multitech.com/documents/publications/data-sheets/86002093.pdf