IBM PowerPC ThinkPad - Non-IBM PCMCIA modems

1998-09-08 The jury is still out regarding the use of 3rd party (non-IBM) PCMCIA modems on the ThinkPads under AIX.  From personal experience I can report that the Hayes Optmia 144 data+fax modem WILL work.  Ironically, the IBM Home And Away series of combo ethernet+modem cards do NOT work.  IBM sells a 33.6k modem guarenteed to work, but is pricey.  There should be slower IBM modems out there on the used market that might work.  Other modems may or may not work.  Perhaps the slower 14.4k modems are more compatible.  Please report any success or otherwise to me.

Procedure to get non-ibm pcmcia modems to configure:

0. Make sure you have the X11.apps.pcmcia installed.  Make sure you have perl installed (or translate any use of perl in this document to the equivalent in sed).

1. Clean-up any mess that may remain from previous attempts at installing your PCMCIA cards.  Try "smit pcmcia" -> "Remove".  Try "smit tty" -> "Remove" to get rid of any tty's you may have tried to define for your modem.

2. Make sure you have your install program set up to automatically install requisites!  Install devices.pcmcia.a4001d00.rte.  If your modem is faster than 14.4k and after going through these instructions you find it does not work, perhaps try redoing all the steps, this time installing devices.pcmcia.a4003900.rte instead.  The reason for this is I do not have a faster modem yet and cannot test this for myself.

Remember the number, either a4001d00 or a4003900, as your "magic number #1" hereon referred to as mn1.  Whenever you see "mn1" in any type-in exmpales, substitute your magic number in place of "mn1".  Note that any letters in mn1 are lowercase.

3. Plug in your PCMCIA card.

4. Run xpcmcia (installed in step #0).

5. Your card should show up in one of the graphical slots.  At the bottom should be an identifier number similar to, but different from mn1.  Remember this number as "magic number #2" hereon referred to as "mn2".  Remember which graphical slot your card showed up in (probably 1 or 2) as "magic slot #1" hereon referred to as "ms1".

6. Quit xpcmcia.

7. In a shell as root, do the following:
        cd /usr/lpp
        cp -Rp devices.pcmcia.mn1 devices.pcmcia.mn2
        cd devices.pcmcia.mn2

8. Use your favorite text editor to edit some files in this directory.  Your goal is to change every occurence of mn1 to mn2.  You'll have to edit the files:
        .cr.status
        productid
        deinstl/*       (both files in here)

9. In the deinstl directory, rename both files so that all occurences of mn1 in the filename are changed to mn2.

10. In a root shell:
cd /usr/lib/objrepos
odmget -q uniquetype="adapter/pcmcia/mn1" PdAt|perl -pe's/mn1/mn2/g'>/tmp/z
odmadd /tmp/z
odmget -q uniquetype="adapter/pcmcia/mn1" PdCn|perl -pe's/mn1/mn2/g'>/tmp/z
odmadd /tmp/z
odmget -q uniquetype="adapter/pcmcia/mn1" PdDv|perl -pe's/mn1/mn2/g'>/tmp/z
odmadd /tmp/z
mkdev -c 'adapter' -s 'pcmcia' -t 'mn2' -w 'ms1' -p 'bus2'

11. The last command (mkdev) should have completed successfully.  If it didn't, then something's wrong and your card will not work yet.  Try going back over the steps and troubleshooting.  Or e-mail aixtp20@tecnopolis.ca and report your findings to me.

12. If everything went ok then go on to configure your new device exactly as you would a normal non-PCMCIA
card/modem.  Add the new device to /etc/uucp/Devices, configure the tty and set up your comms program (ate, pcomm) or PPP.  These steps are outside the realm of this document as they are not specific to PCMCIA cards.

13. E-mail aixtp20@tecnopolis.ca and let me know how it went.  Include your card model/brand and mn2.