What dialup modem WILL work with 8.x and uart?

[Robert Bonomi]

> From owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org  Mon Aug 22 05:20:20 2011
> Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:18:18 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Lars Eighner <luvbeasie at larseighner.com>
> To: "Conrad J. Sabatier" <conrads at cox.net>
> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: What dialup modem WILL work with 8.x and uart?
>
> On Mon, 22 Aug 2011, Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:34:22 -0500 (CDT)
> > Lars Eighner <luvbeastie at larseighner.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Since uart in 8.x will not support my PCI 3com hardware modem (as
> >> FreeBSD sio has since 4.x) and my PR is gathering dust, before I buy
> >> any more coaster sets from osdisc.com, it behooves to ask if there
> >> are any dialup modems that 8.x uart actually supports for ppp on
> >> demand?
> >
> > Do you have a serial port on your machine?  If so, why not go with an
> > external modem?  Always worked for me, back in the day.  :-)
>
> And my internal hardware modem worked for me when there was a serial driver,
> namely sio.  It won't work with 8.x and uart, so there is no reason to think
> that things that used to work with sio will work with uart.

'uart' supports virtually _everything_ that 'sio' does -- plus an additonal
chipset or two -- with precisely TWO exceptions.  If it 'looks like' a 
standard serial port on the legacy ISA bus, and is based on the NS8250 
through NS16550A, or a Zilog 'SCC', then uart works.  The other alternative
is a USB serial port.

Even 'sio' support of "PCI serial ports" and/or modems was -very-limitid.
precisely *two* models of cards -- The 3Com FaxModem PCI and the Advantec 
56k Voice Messaging PCI FaxModem.

Supporting serial controllers across a PCI bridge takes lots of work. and
does *not* 'generalize' well.

If I were in your situation, I'e look at a USB serial port and external
RS-232 modem.