# I found an old dual port 56k modem PCI card



## obsigna (Mar 10, 2019)

I plugged it into a free PCI slot of a FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE-p3-x86-64 machine, and pciconf -lBbceVv reports the following:

```
none4@pci0:4:0:0:    class=0x078000 card=0x200414f1 chip=0x2f0014f1 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Conexant Systems, Inc.'
    device     = 'HSF 56k HSFi Modem'
    class      = simple comms
    bar   [10] = type Memory, range 32, base 0xdf000000, size 65536, enabled
    bar   [14] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xe000, size 8, enabled
    cap 01[40] = powerspec 2  supports D0 D3  current D0
```

Questions:

may this be useful for setting up a FAX facility?
can this somehow be employed for telephony, I am thinking about attaching a headset to the computer. Would the modem be able to pass somehow the MIC input over the modem line and pass received voice to the headphones? The card got a not so tiny piezo speaker, and received voice I could grab there after some soldering, perhaps adding an OPamp for signal conditioning.
(Please excuse my ignorance, its so long time ago when I last used 56k modems - I remember, I heard some real voices when I dialled the wrong number)
any other good ideas, something other than, mount it into a nice frame for decorating the wall?
forget anything of the above and give it to an orphanage?


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## mrclksr (Mar 11, 2019)

This is how I made use of an old serial modem: https://freeshell.de/~mk/projects/lazydial.html


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## obsigna (Mar 11, 2019)

lazydial would be a nice start for exploring this PCI modem card. Unfortunately, I cannot find any driver for it for FreeBSD. I could download a Linux driver which worked with Linux Kernels <= 2.4.x. It wouldn’t be worth the effort to port an ancient driver for setting up a dial assistant. Anyway, many thanks for your kind response.


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## ralphbsz (Mar 11, 2019)

You need to do some research on what type of modem this is.  If it emulates a serial port, and does all the signal processing itself, you might be in luck: it might just use a serial port driver.  On the other hand, if it is a "Winmodem", it might use the system's main CPU for the audio signal processing.  For Winmodems, you need a binary blob that does the signal processing; those tend to be available for Windows, and sometimes for Linux, but on *BSD it would probably look bleak.

A few months ago, I bought an old Dell USB modem, and hooked it up to my FreeBSD server.  I use it just to track incoming caller ID, so if a known number calls our house, I get an e-mail (for a while we were having family emergencies, and confused relatives might call our home number).  Works great.  I looked at the documentation and decided that in theory it would be possible to use it as a fax modem, and even as a voice answering machine (there are packages with names *getty that support that).  But setting it up would take a whole weekend of work, so I didn't bother: I hardly ever need fax functionality, and we have a perfectly fine answering machine.


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## obsigna (Mar 11, 2019)

I may be wrong, however for me the relatively large Conexant chip at the right of the board looks like a DSP unit. Later I will look for suitable serial drivers.


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## SirDice (Mar 11, 2019)

As far as I know Conexant only made "winmodem" type modem cards.


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