[ltp] MWave-Linux-Petition

[Paul Rubin]

Yes I agree, IBM should release the Mwave specs so that those with
Mwaves can program them.  I have a 755cx with an Mwave, for example.
However, I hope you are right that IBM will stop including the Mwave
in future Thinkpads.  And also, that they not use Winmodems :(.  Note
that many winmodems do contain DSP's; they just move the controller
functions to the CPU.

The proliferation of different drivers for disks, cds, etc. happen
mostly when a device type is new and there aren't standards yet.
Disks settled out many years ago into IDE and SCSI.  MFM, ESDI, SMD,
and all kinds of vendor specific interfaces are long gone.  There used
to be dozens of CD-rom types but now almost all are atapi or scsi.  CD
recorder command sets have also converged on UMC or something like
that.  It's true that there are still several types of display
adapters all needing their own X drivers, but at least those aren't
kernel drivers.  Hopefully those will settle out too.  The general
tendency is for vendors to get their act together and standardize
as a technology becomes mature.  With modems, the opposite seems to
be happening, and that's bad.

Btw, the mwave, even when it works, is a pretty lousy modem in terms
of latency, impaired line performance, etc.