What are Winmodems?
Some years ago, hardware manufacturers realized that they could produce dial-up modems more cheaply if they shifted the hard work of decoding the signal onto the computer's operating system. With the work off-loaded, the modem’s circuitry could contain fewer and simpler components, thus saving money.
For this to work, a special hardware driver was needed that effectively works as a middleman, handing the decoding work to the computer's CPU. Unlike with other hardware drivers, these modem drivers aren’t around simply to make the hardware work with the operating system. Effectively, the drivers for such modems are a separate piece of software within themselves.
Because of their need for this special driver software, which usually runs only on Windows, the modems are known as winmodems.
As you might anticipate, using the modems under Linux presents many problems, chief among them being that Windows and Linux are two separate operating systems and, generally speaking, are incompatible. Although solutions exist and the problems aren't insurmountable, setting up a winmodem under Linux often involves quite a lot of additional configuration.
There are many types of winmodems, all of which need to be configured in different ways. An
excellent web site exists that provides both step-by-step information and the necessary software. Using a computer that can get online, visit http://linmodems.org. Additionally, the user-friendly guide at http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/first.html might also be of help. As always, searching the Ubuntu forums (www.ubuntoforums.org) and specifying the make and model of your modem is also a good idea, because it's almost certain that at least one other person will have tried to make the modem work under Ubuntu.
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