Re: Winmodem support

Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@mit.edu)
Sun, 16 Aug 1998 18:10:31 -0400


Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 14:31:00 +0200 (SAST)
From: Craig Schlenter <craig@is.co.za>

Contention #2: Specs are 'historically difficult' to obtain.

(2) Has anyone tried to get the specs for the winmodems? Saying things
like 'historically difficult' doesn't exactly tell us whether or not
someone has asked hard enough for the specs. The more people that ask, the
greater the chance that something will happen.

I've mailed support@usr.com and asked for the specs btw.

Yes, people have asked. In the best case, they've been told that you
have to sign an NDA which basically precludes releasing source code for
the drive. In the worst case, they were told they had to pay $$$ *AND*
sign the nasty NDA.

I don't think this is USR's fault, by the way. I think it's coming from
Rockwell, the manufacturer which makes the chipsets for all of the
Winmodems.

And by the way, Winmodens *are* crap. :-) Consider that for video
boards, we are seeing more and more advanced video boards which move
more and more processing away from the CPU to the video boards ---
that's what hardware accelerators do. So it's ironic that for modems,
we're seeing the exact opposite: the devolution of modems.

- Ted

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