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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

We now know why you are not supposed to move Win98 hard drives between 
computers.  The first move was relatively successfull (between two 166MHz 
computers of the same age).  Opera crashed when we installed to the first 
computer, it did not when we installed to the same hard drive on the 
second computer, and when we moved the drive back Opera crashed again.  
The rest worked.

As an experiment, we moved the drive to the Compaq PII and it loaded a lot 
of motherboard-related drivers and then informed us of a video conflict.  
TrioS3 was using the same memory range as Western Digital (not the hard 
drive, which is Maxtor) and PnP controller. We reinstalled and there were 
no more conflicts.

Now we are trying to get a 56K winmodem to work in there.

1.  Lucent LTmodem.  We had a 33K in the Compaq already.  Tried several 
drivers that claimed to upgrade it to 56K and they all upgraded it to 28K, 
so we removed it.  This one has linux drivers.  We have two others.  What 
is the chance that the others (slightly different cards) would be 
upgradeable to 56K with a Windows driver and if they are, how do we 
upgrade them for linux?

2.  PCtel 56K pci modem.  There is source code available, generic for 
PCTel, to compile your own linux driver.  You need to have kernel source 
on your computer, I think.  Is it very difficult to compile a linux modem 
driver?

The Compaq computer has no Com2.  Windows installed this modem driver to 
Com1.  But it cannot find the modem (it found a USR winmodem) and says 
'Modem not responging' and then when I try to do Modem, Diagnosis, More 
Info 'Cannot find port in registry'.  

Same problem in the Gateway.

I had a working 56K Rockwell/Conexant RLDL56DPF in the Gateway.  Not a 
linmodem.  When I put it in the COmpaq I got the same error messages as 
above.  I am almost afraid to try it again in the Gateway.  THe Gateway 
also puts all its modems onto Com1 (except it put the Rockwell on Com3 and 
somehow I got it to change to Com2).  We tried disabling and enabling and 
'auto' both Com Ports.  We plugged a mouse into Com1 and it put the modem 
on Com3.

Any hints?  A neighbor may have time to help us tonight.

If we can get all of these winmodems working at 56K for Windows then I 
might try them for Linux.

I ended up using a Cirrus 33K in the Gateway, that won't work unless you 
first tell it in autoexec.bat to hang up (echo at > com2,  echo ath0 > 
com2) and thus when you turn on the computer in disconnects any existing 
phone connections.  That modem would not work when set to Com2 in the 
Gateway.  It worked when we set it to PnP.  It does not work well in DOS 
and the diagnostic program cannot find it.  Good riddance.  But we 
promised to put a 56K in the Compaq as it is for someone who plays Windows 
games online.

More on Windows.  My partner is taking a C++ course and tried to read his 
homework assignment but discovered it was two .doc files that linux could 
not open.  We saved them and converted with antiword.

Antiword also will not work from a user account.  It looks for its mapping 
files in /root/.antiword/ or in /usr/share/ something or other which BL2 
did not have, so the package I made for BL2 puts them in /root/.antiword.
It runs fine from /root.  We would need to copy the mapping files to 
/usr/share/ but I did not want to package it that way - or does linux let 
you install to a non-existent directory?  I suppose I could write a 
doinstall.sh to make that directory but I don't know how yet.

The antiword35.tgz at James' site is what I compiled.  It deals with newer 
forms of Word than what is at Steven's site.  If anyone wants to improve 
it to install into /usr/share/ please do so.  It works fine 'as is' if you 
are root.

Maybe I could copy the files to /user/.antiword?  May pla ywith this some 
day.  After the winmodems are under control.