dial up on laptop stalling out

[Tom Caudron]

I just put Fedora Core 1 (Nice release, btw) on an old laptop (P266 w/
96MB RAM and 4 GB HDD) for a friend that needed a computer.  Though slow
(what did I expect on this old laptop?!?), everything seems to work OK
except for two problems:

1)
The onboard sound wasn't detected.  Gentoo Linux couldn't get it right
either and this is not why I'm writing.  That'll be a different thread.

2)
The modem, a Xircom CM56T, was detected as a generic modem.

When logged into the laptop as a user, I tried to add a new dial up
connection via the Inernet Configuration Wizard.  The whole system
locked up on hardware detection of the modem.  Though I had to provide
the root password, I suspected it was a permissions issue anyway and I
was partly right.  I logged in as root and tried the same thing.  The
setup of the dial up connection went fine.

However, when I went to activate the connection (in Network Device
Control) it stops doing anything useful after telling me "Activating
Network Device MyISP, please wait..."  That screen just stays there.  It
does not seem to affect the rest of the system.  Everything else works,
but that windows goes no further.

I also logged back in as a user after the dial up was configured and
tried to activate it there.  As soon as I tried to activate it as a
user, the whole system locked up.

I was hoping someone could help with two things.  First, I'd like to be
able to activate the device (obviously <g>) and be able to surf the net
on the laptop via a dial up connection.  Second, perhaps someone can
direct me to a more HIGified dialer for Gnome?  I mean, it can't be that
to dial up an ISP a user should have to go to the Network Device Control
panel to activate the modem.  Seems kinda odd.

Any help at all is appreciated.  If you need any log info, I'll be happy
to provide it.  Frankly, I just wasn't sure what to include here.

Thanks in advance.

-Tom Caudron