Re: [hylafax-users] Fax Hardware Compatabilty

[bill@castandcrew.com (Bill Young)]

/ FROM:  shaun arral <shaun@ifloor.com>, Jan 30 11:38 2001
| ABOUT: [hylafax-users] Fax Hardware Compatabilty
|
| Can HylaFax talk to these modem cards:
| 
| digi:
|  DataFire RAS
| 
| multitech:
|   MultiModemISI
| 
| Any issues??
| Where to find info??
| 
| Thanks,
| Shaun
| 
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\ END: shaun arral

I've been using the MultiModemISI cards on Linux for about a couple of
months and I've had nothing but troubles with them.  The modems lock up
and the only cure is rebooting the system.  Multitech support sent me a
driver update after working with them for a while, that would allow me to
run a program that would let me reset the modem manually if it locked up
(i.e. not fixing the lockup problem directly).  That driver spewed extra
characters out when doing any output, even AT command output (though the
unlocking program worked in conjunction with an "stty min 1").  The
Linux drivers for these cards are not ready for prime time.  When the
modems weren't locking up, they were getting MPS errors when connecting
to various fax machines.  I think I was getting about a 5% failure rate
(which was way too high).  I have two computers and three cards.  So,
this is not just a single bad card.  Also, they finally admited that
other customers were having similar problems with the cards.

On a brighter note, I just installed a Digi AccelePort RAS 8 to replace
one of the Multitech cards (I know you asked about the Datafire RAS,
but I don't have one of those).  The Digi modems work great.  I'm seeing
practically no errors.  Anytime there is an error (mostly a few COMREC
type errors), a retry will get the fax across.  Usually when the Multitech
didn't like a fax machine, forget it, you'll never get anything to or
from it.  The drivers seem very mature and there are good utilities to
see card status and reset the modems (and I'm happy to say I haven't
had to use them).

I called Digi before purchasing them and the person I talked to said
that they had tried their product with Hylafax (where the Multitech
people hadn't).  They said the modems configured properly with the Class
2.0 configs provided with Hylafax.  That appears to be true (I'm using
close to the latest CVS code).

The one problem that I had with the card is that Digi made their device
names look like ttyG0_00.  The Hylafax code has a kludge in it for System
V.4 systems that turns '/'s to '_'s and, unfortunately, '_'s to '/'s in
device names.  I had to comment out a few lines of code to get it to be
happy with the device names (the Digi utilites really prefer those names,
so I didn't want to rename them).

So, the bottom line, avoid the Multitech modems like the plague (I
like Multitech, but these cards with their Linux drivers are useless).
The Digi products seem much more reliable in my particular situation.

Hope this helps,
Bill


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