From owner-freebsd-hardware  Tue Jun 12 15: 0:23 2001
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From: Michael VanLoon <MichaelV@EDIFECS.COM>
To: "'Koster, K.J.'" <K.J.Koster@kpn.com>,
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Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: RE: 3com Winmodem
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 15:07:27 -0700
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> From: Koster, K.J. [mailto:K.J.Koster@kpn.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 3:44 AM
> 
> > Is that true? and if it is, why can't FreeBSD, or Linux, or 
> > any other UNIX, work with it.
> >
> Because the manufacturers do not release the hardware specs 
> to open source
> developers.
> 
> This is a FAQ by the way, so search the mailing list archives 
> before posting
> questions like this.

To be more specific.  A "WinModem" is actually a crippled modem.  They throw
out as much hardware as possible to make it cheap, then load all the work
onto your CPU.  Basically, WinModems are evil.  Just being connected sucks
away CPU resources, where a "real" modem does all that work itself, causing
no work for your CPU.

Why won't it work?  Because it requires that software, you know the software
that does all the work on your CPU for the hardware they removed from the
modem.  That software is written by the modem manufacturers for Windows.
And as someone else said, they don't open the binary interface to just
anyone, so it's pretty hard for someone else to just whip up some software.

There's a reason why these things are so incredibly cheap: they suck. :-)
Though it doesn't always hold true, in this case it does so extremely well:
you get what you pay for...

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