Modem not detected

Preston Crawford me at prestoncrawford.com
Tue Nov 18 23:33:49 UTC 2003


>     Hmmm....this is the same modem as before?  Any chance the BIOS
> changed at all before the install, and maybe the built-in serial ports
> are butting heads?  Just a thought; my brother's on a dialup, out in the
> sticks, so I'm a  *little* up to speed on it.

No. Same exact setup. Worked under SuSE. Worked under FreeBSD. Doesn't work under Fedora. I have serial port 1 activated in my bios, serial port 2 deactivated. It's an old ISA modem, though, and I did mess with the pins. Maybe I should take a look at them again.
 
>     Onto a bigger story- when you first installed your cable modem, did
> you have to go to a special Comcast website to get 'registered'?  I
> think if we had the proper time and conversation, maybe we could get you
> back on the full-speed line...

I don't know. Basically the story is that this weekend I signed up with Comcast. I thought I could just go plug the modem in and go, like in the old AT&T days. I found out I had to have Windows or Mac, so I called up and found out the dope on how to try to get around this registration BS. I found out how to put in the proxy settings, etc. to get Mozilla to find sas.r1.attbi.com to start the registration. I was able to put in my account number and my registration code, but when it went to go to the page to do the actual agreement (oai.comcast.net or something like that) it couldn't reach that page via the cable modem. So what I had to do.... and this is the part that makes me very angry since this was after many hours and many phone calls with Comcast. 

What I figured out (and Comcast owes me big time both for the time wasted and the stupidity of their problem, judged by the solution I had to engineer) to fix this was the following.

I got to the page before the page I couldn't reach using the cable modem... using the cable modem. Then I clicked the next button (because it had to get to the unreachable page from the reachable page) and before it got a chance to timeout I brought down the ethernet connection, flushed the routing table and dialed up my old earthlink account. That worked. As stupid and ridiculous as it sounds, that's what it took. I reached the unreachable page. It had the variables it needed from the previous page. I signed up, life was good.
 
Then yesterday I called up to cancel the visit from the installer (my install was free, but I was just trying to be courteous, something I shouldn't have been, given what I was put through) and the reject on the phone didn't cancel the visit, HE CANCELLED MY ACCOUNT!!!

So now I'm back at step 1 again, except now I'm using Fedora and Fedora doesn't recognize my modem. That's the story. 

>     I'm on ICQ with the number below; if you'd like to discuss it before
> you get back home, let me know.  (or you could call me on the phone, but
> that's usually expensive...)

No more expensive than about 15 wasted hours with Comcast's merry cast of invalids and their bastardized registration system. Anyway, as I have no modem, nor no cable modem I can't ICQ you. If you have an idea you have about an hour (before I leave for home) to tell me what I could possibly do differently. Otherwise email me your phone number. Let me know.

I appreciate your help and concern, by the way. You've offered more help already than I've received from Comcast so far and I'm paying them.

Preston





More information about the fedora-list mailing list