Howto Conexant and Smartlink modem

**gunfus** · August 5th, 2008

I continue doing the porting.. quite a bit of work I must say. Tonight I was able to move forward but I later got stuck again with a bunge of errors in /serial_hsf.c

I have the steps to get to this point it but the solution to get my modem working is still not completed. Let me know if someone wants them.

**jtsop** · March 29th, 2009

I want them and I can try to help if you need anything.

**Trespasser** · April 23rd, 2009

First off, thanks Matchless for starting this thread.

Just wanted to say that the Dell hsf deb for Hardy works fine. But of course I had to revert to using Hardy 8.04.2 to get it to work which is alright...seems to run great. I'm doing this not for myself (I'm on DSL running Jaunty) but for my brother, and hopefully for my Dad at some future date, who are both restricted to using dial-up. The download speed varies between 4.4-6.2 kilobytes per second (which is 35.2-49.6 kilobits per second). About what I got when I had dial-up so it seems to be a full speed driver. The only other problem I had was even though I was connecting alright Firefox would always start up Offline. It seems Firefox is getting its cue from Network Manager. You can correct this by going into about:config and search for toolkit.networkmanager.disable
and toggle it to true.

BTW, this is for a Conexant HSF with Vendor/Device ID 14f1:2f00.

**Jose Catre-Vandis** · September 21st, 2009

I am a bit late to the party on this one, and for me the beer seems to have run out!

Just installed Xubuntu 9.04 on an oldish Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pro laptop. This has a built-in smartlink modem, evidenced by the fact that xubuntu offered proprietary hardware drivers for it on initial reboot. I installed these and this has provided the slmodemd daemon in my processes.

Xp identifies the modem as Agere Systems and works on dial up no problems.

I tried gnome-ppp to start with but as this failed moved back to wvdial for testing. Using the standard init strings generated by wvdail, the modem is recognised and is initialised, but then stops at:

Code:

Waiting for carrier

then goes into a "Trying again" loop which I have to CTRL+C out of.

I don't get any sounds from the modem, so guess it is not firing up. I have tried all sorts of init string settings following exhaustive searches about this on the net and forum, but always get the same result. I have edited the sl-modem-daemon file for my country - UK.

Am able to reset the modem after each failure using:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/sl-modem-daemon restart

Can any one advise on my missing link to get this thing working? Am not by the laptop at present so can't issue wvdial.conf info for another 10 hours or so, but all advice will be gratefully received.

**_duncan_** · September 21st, 2009

A couple of things you can check:

1. There are many variants of smartlink chipsets, but most of them require the following parameters to be set in the wvdial configuration file to dial out properly:

Code:

Carrier Check = off
Stupid Mode = on

2. Starting with intrepid (8.10) and now jaunty (9.04), user ids are no longer automatically added to the 'dip' group. This results in pppd (ppp daemon) permissions problem when using dialers without sudo. This problem can be solved by adding the user id to the 'dip' group explicity, as follows:

Code:

sudo adduser userID dip

replace userID with the actual user ID.

-------------------------

BTW, my grasp of dial-up modems are not as good as it was before I moved up to broadband. It's just something I dabble with occasionally.

If you're running out of options with Xubuntu, you may want to consider trying out Puppy Linux 4.3. It's probably the most dial-up friendly distro. It's also more lightweight than Xubuntu, which ought to be a bonus since we're dealing with an old laptop.

**Jose Catre-Vandis** · September 21st, 2009

Originally Posted by _duncan_

A couple of things you can check:

1. There are many variants of smartlink chipsets, but most of them require the following parameters to be set in the wvdial configuration file to dial out properly:

Code:

Carrier Check = off
Stupid Mode = on

2. Starting with intrepid (8.10) and now jaunty (9.04), user ids are no longer automatically added to the 'dip' group. This results in pppd (ppp daemon) permissions problem when using dialers without sudo. This problem can be solved by adding the user id to the 'dip' group explicity, as follows:

Code:

sudo adduser userID dip

replace userID with the actual user ID.

-------------------------

BTW, my grasp of dial-up modems are not as good as it was before I moved up to broadband. It's just something I dabble with occasionally.

If you're running out of options with Xubuntu, you may want to consider trying out Puppy Linux 4.3. It's probably the most dial-up friendly distro. It's also more lightweight than Xubuntu, which ought to be a bonus since we're dealing with an old laptop.

Hi Duncan

Thanks for the tips. Have already added user to the dip group, and done the stupid and carrier settings (tried both on and off).

I'll give Puppy a run, and see if that works

EDIT: Tried Puppy, it can't find the modem at all

**_duncan_** · September 22nd, 2009

Did you use the scanModem tool to identify the chipset? It might also be interesting to look at what lspci has to say about the modem.

IIRC, not all smartlink chipsets are supported by the open source driver from linmodems.org.

----------

Does your laptop have a serial port? PCMCIA slot? USB slot? The reason I'm asking is if the softmodem turned out to be totally unusable for linux, your best bet might be to purchase a full hardware modem attached to one of those slots I mentioned.

**Jose Catre-Vandis** · September 22nd, 2009

Yes, scanModem suggested to install the same driver (slmodemd) as Xubuntu.

I can use an external modem via USB, however the end user won't be too impressed to find what worked OK on XP doesn't with Xubuntu.

I note in some places it is recommended to install linux-headers. Would this make a difference?

The laptop has gone back to owner now, so i will have to wait til she messes up XP again

**_duncan_** · September 23rd, 2009

I note in some places it is recommended to install linux-headers. Would this make a difference?

Only if you need to compile the driver (slamr) from linmodems.org. Some smartlink chipsets don't need slamr and can use ALSA instead. However, I've seen reports that computers with intel sound cards may be difficult to work with using ALSA-based modem chipsets.

I'm surprised Puppy didn't work out. I must've tried 7 or 8 different modems with it (smartlink, pctel, ess, etc) and most work out of the box using the live CD. Of course my sample is small considering the hundreds of different modem chipsets available. Smartlink alone has 10+ varieties.

The laptop has gone back to owner now, so i will have to wait til she messes up XP again

I'm hoping it doesn't happen, but if it does and you feel like experimenting with the modem again, PM me with the link to the thread.

**vayira** · January 4th, 2010

I'm going to try to get Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit to recognise my Conexant HSF 56k HSFi Modem (for sending faxes).

If anyone knows any up to date info about these instructions I'd be grateful. Otherwise I'll start following this howto from the earliest posts.

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