If you are hinting that you want to use one of the new 'softmodems', no.   
 These new $20US 56K modems do all of the V.90 processing and compression   
in CPU instead of using dedicated hardware on the modem.

The most obvious advantage to this is cost.  Fewer part count results in   
lower modem cost.

The disadvantage is support.  Since the OS has to do work for the modem,   
your OS has to have the correct code for the appropriate modem.

Example1: USRobotics famous Winmodem is not supported by NetBSD because   
all of the negotiation and protocol work is done in software, and (if I   
remember right) USR isn't giving the info out on how it works.

Example2: Rockwell, the famous modem chip manufacture, came out with this   
great idea around '93 of doing all of the protocol compression via the   
CPU(OS) and called it WinDAPI.  To use it you had to use a DLL supplied   
by Rockwell.  All other OS were screwed.  Oh yea, and it sucked!  It took   
me 2 weeks of hacking to get it work right with Procomm Plus. Side note:   
don't get me wrong, I prefer Rockwell based modems, WinDAPI was poorly   
implimented.

Now on a positive note, it seems that a majority of these inexpensive 56K   
modems all work with the same software, so there *seems* to be some   
consistency in design.  So with a little code in hand, it could be done.   
 I'm not a NetBSD developer, so I have no idea if such support is planed.

Now if you are going to get a regular modem ($50+US), I don't think it   
should be a problem.  Most of them are PnP and register themselfs as   
another Com port.

jam

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Martin [mailto:BruceM@cat.co.za]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 1999 11:22 AM
> To: netbsd-help@netbsd.org; John A. Maier
> Subject: Modem support in NetBSD?
>
>
>
> I am currently looking for a list of PCI modems (normal and
> ISDN) which
> have driver support under NetBSD (i386 and arm32). What
> modems do people
> out there use with NetBSD?
>
> Thanks
>  Bruce Martin
>
>