Right, everything is looking great thanks to X and KDE but I must get my PCI modem to work or all is for nothing :( /sbin/lspci reports Ambient Technologies Inc Unknown Device 4000 (Rev2), which I am guessing is the modem as the only other thing seems to be the Ensoniq soundcard. Now what do I do ? Well I can confirm that it is Ambient PCI modem, but the manual (which is just a leaflet) says little else ... Well cat /proc/interrupts does not show anything relating to COM ports and I have loads of external ones anyway .... dmesg | less shows ttyS00 and ttyS01 but I have two external serial ports it also show PPP support in the kernel. What I need to do is identify where the modem is as it should just be a COM port, I tried echo ATDT > /dev/ttyS0 and then ttyS1 /2/3 in the hope I would hear it try and dial but no response. I am sure its a hardware modem and not a win modem but ..... This is where Linux fails to pieces, I need to access the internet for information about connecting to the internet :( And, I bet the info is somewhere in all the docs installed on the machine >:( Oh and I can not see /dev/modem either :( A quick (from root) find . -name *modem* has turned up a number of docs I will have to pursue....(please stand by) lspci -vv says its on IRQ 9 but the docs I am reading are only for WinModems . Ah here something interesting Ambient Technologies was previously Cirrus Logic and both are now Intel, maybe I do have a software modem :( To be sure I am shutting down the machine (shutdown -h now) and pulling the card out to see if it id's itself. Of course my neons get in way >:( Right I can Id the modem as a HCF now I just need to connect to the internet to get the drivers .... Good thing I have another computer then (even if it is only 33.6) a quick google and Intel offer me their 2.4.x drivers, not what to do with them ... Un tar them with tar -xzvf archive.tgz and then I find I need the kernel sources... Drat that means I have to tangle with dselect So I find the headers and hit install to find 21 other seemingly random packages want to come along for the ride, including the freeciv, esound, xli and various libraries :X This is not easy, right I copied the include directory from kernel-headers (which was in /usr/src) to /lib/modules/2.4.18-bf2.4/build (had to create build) and now the HaM (thats the type of modem) install script is complaining that /boot/vmlinuz.autoconf.h does not exist Doh, I am being too smart, if I just make ham (I prefer make ice cream ;) it compiles OK, now how to test it ?..... lsmod shows the ham modules are loaded and /dev/modem now exists. pppconfig seems the way to go, well that seems to have set it up now how to dial? Had to id the modem device as /dev/modem manualy as there was not an option and autodetect found nothing on the serial ports. pppconfig suggested pon would make a connection and a ps aux does show pppd trying to connect, but now what ? ifconfig is not showing anything other than lo (loopback adapter, which you always have) and tail /var/log/messages shows lots of things to do with modems but are they prompts or messages and if they are messages what do they mean ? Ah I need to pon demon (as my setup was called demon), and it all works, the KDE browser happily shows google and poff shuts it off again, and this will be easy to handle my to ISP dial up accounts !! Proberly should implement some sort of firewall security ! In /usr/share/doc/iptables/html there is some great docs and example scripts, like one for simply no incoming connections.