I prefer ISAPNP in the kernel myself. It works IMHO much better than the old ISAPNP utilities. You can look in /proc/isapnp for its output, and it handles things fairly nicely. Some modems will automatically get set up if they are on a standard IRQ. On the other hand, I remember something about Rockwell modems not being fully functional in Linux. Here is what the Modem-Howto says on the subject. Is your modem perhaps one of these older Rockwell modems that it is talking about? 2.9.2. Rockwell (RPI) Drivers Some older Rockwell chips need Rockwell RPI (Rockwell Protocol Interface) drivers for compression and error correction. They can still be used with Linux even though the driver software works only under MS Windows. This is because the MS Windows software (which you don't have) does only compression and error correction. If you are willing to operate the modem without compression and error correction then it's feasible to use it with Linux. To do this you will need to disable RPI by sending the modem (via the initialization string) a "RPI disable" command each time you power on your modem. On my old modem this command was +H0. Not having data compression available makes it slower to get webpages but is just as fast when downloading files that are already compressed.
