xircom

[mykle hansen <mykle@Vinton.COM>]

> I'm seriosly consider shift to Linux, but I don't have drivers for Mwave =
> (that's means -> modem!!! and sound board) and for Xircom board (my =
> network connection). If anyone knows drivers for that stuff I'm very =
> interested.

for the Xircom card, i understand that the reason there's been
no Xircom drivers is that Xircom has ben unwilling to provide 
technical info for free.  the guy who wrote the card services
package mentioned in his last release notes that Xircom has 
changed this policy, so there may be Xircom support soon -- i 
know that everybody wants it.  (i recently had to return my cool
Xircom combo card so that i could get a Linux-supported 3com
card.  clearly it would make sense for Xircom to support the 
linux market.)

for the MWave, i don't know where support would come from.  i 
know there is a DSP development toolkit available for Linux
which might let you write one ... the modem-simulator may 
work anyway if, at the BIOS level, it tells the system that
it's a serial port.  this is how most modular modem cards work.

but either way, one cool thing about Linux is that you don't
really have to abandon your current operating system to use
it, unless your hard disk is super-small.  you can use the
UMSDOS package to create a filesystem inside your DOS partition
so that you don't have to repartition or format anything, and
at that point it's pretty easy to load linux, try it out, check
out the hardware support, and erase it if it doesn't seem 
useful.  

-m-