internal modem on 770X

[Rob Mayoff]

| Has anyone contacted IBM on the modem issue yet?  I know they are
| begining to support Linux is a BIG way... I wonder if a beta copy of a
| modem program exists somewhere in the bowls of Big Blue...?

I posted a request on the Thinkpad 770 discussion forum yesterday asking
for an IBM contact.  No response yet.  Then I searched on Dejanews and
found this very interesting article:

http://www.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=464317835

[Appended the article below.]

I sent him e-mail asking for some details about the Windows driver, the
relationship between MWave and ACP, and whether information is available
outside IBM on programming them.  I'll post the response here if I get
one.

/*--------------------------------------------------------------------*/

Is use of WINE acceptable for a short-term implementation of ThinkPad Modem?  
Author: Keith Frechette <kfrechet@hotmail.com>
Date: 1999/04/09
Forum: comp.os.linux.development.system 

First, please allow me a quick introduction. I am IBM's development team
lead responsible for the Windows 2000 modem support for the ThinkPad
770/600 series laptops. I've been with IBM's DSP Integrated Solutions
group (formerly the Mwave group) for the last seven years. Life is good.

I've only recently begun my journey as a Linux advocate and developer.
As a matter of fact, it was IBM and RedHat's joint annoucement in
February that inspired me to go buy a copy of RedHat Linux 5.2 to see
what the hubbub was all about. I installed it on a ThinkPad 600E, and
I was impressed at how easy it was for me to install. (Granted, I am
a long-time Windows developer; so that did give me an edge over, say,
Grandma Jean.) However, I was very disappointed (and reasonably so) to
see the lack of support for the 600E's internal modem. I said to myself,
"What a bunch of slackers those RedHat folks are, not providing me with
modem support." But then I figured, what the hey -- it's not their fault
that I haven't given them any code!

Although IBM has not committed to providing Linux modem drivers for its
ThinkPad 770/600 series, I have begun my own after-hours research into
the best approach for porting our existing Windows 95/98/NT/2000 drivers
to Linux. Although a small kernel driver is required to do I/O to the
modem, the bulk of the Windows drivers is user-mode code. As a quick
and purely experimental path for getting the modem running on Linux and
to help identify any architectural hurdles, I am thinking of creating a
Linux kernel driver and then using WINE to run the existing user-mode
Windows NT 4.0 drivers, with possibly small modifications. If the modem
works in that environment, porting the user-mode code to pure Linux
should be relatively straight forward.

Any thoughts on this approach and whether an alpha release implemented
this way would be useful to the Linux community?

Again, it's important for me to stress that IBM has not committed to
supporting the ThinkPad ACP modem on Linux, whether or not I create
a working modem after hours or, perhaps eventually, as part of my
regular assignments. However, I'd like to think that IBM wouldn't let a
high-demand project go to waste. :-)

-- Keith

Keith Frechette
Software Development Engineer
IBM DSP Integrated Solutions