How I Got PPP to work w/Slackware 7.1 on an IBM Thinkpad 365E using an external US Robotics 56K modem connecting to the Ohio State University via Homenet.

Note: the ultimate goal was to get my 3com Lan+modem 3CCFEM556B card working as
a dial-up but after fruitless attempts, I decided it would make more sense to get
an external modem working 1st so I could see what was happening-- and
then go for it.

I had a lot of trouble and burned up a lot of time getting ppp working on the
external modem, and I'm still not sure what was the solution, but here are some
things I did which led to the success.

After running pppsetup, I changed the default communication in /etc/ppp/pppscript
(the one that comes after ABORT "NO DIALTONE") to "" "ATZ"

I also added a 2nd DNS for OSU in
/etc/resolv.conf: nameserver 128.146.1.7

Also ran netconfig to see if that would have any effect.
Static and for last question of nameserver one of OSU's:
128.146.4

Also changed some things in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1:
commented out Gateway w/#

And commented out the last section of rc.inet1 like this:

#if [ ! "$GATEWAY" = "" ]; then
# /sbin/route add default gw $[GATEWAY] netmask 0.0.0.0 metric 1
# fi

Also added the following to /etc/ppp/options as suggested
here:

noccp
nobsdcomp
noaccomp
nopcomp
novj

and in /etc/ppp/options, changed asyncmap 0 to:
asyncmap 0xa0000


UPDATE 11/20/01: I got the 3com Lan+modem 3CCFEM556B card working!
56K US Robotics External modem was assigned by pppsetup to ttyS0.

Meanwhile, the 56K PCMCIA LAN/Modem card in top slot of the IBM Thinkpad 365E
was assigned ttyS1. (I found that the card was assigned to ttyS1 by typing:

shell> ls -l /dev/modem
as suggested on this page).


To get the modem card working, I changed the /etc/ppp/options and
/etc/ppp/pppsetup.txt files in this manner: in the 'options' file I changed
ttyS0 to ttyS1, and in the 'pppsetup.txt' file I changed ttyS0 to ttyS1 in two
places. I did not change anything else and, upon issuing the ppp-go command,
it connected beautifully!


Other sources:
http://www2.giganet.net/~mark/NetBSD/ppp.html
http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/SUPPORTED.CARDS
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO
http://www.nowhere.com.au/expressnote
http://lists.debian.org/debian-laptop/1999/debian-laptop-199911/msg00044.html (lsmod command)
http://www.linux-laptop.net


J.M. 11/14/01 - 11/20/01
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