Here are 2 cases of something like your problems are (peterh I am sorry if you allredy tried this w/o success):

1. http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~comech/tools/PCImodems.html

2. "The 5610B works with Mepis 2004.06 and SM 3.3. I did nothing special. But you have to make sure you have it on the correct COM Port for your machine. Sometimes u have to confirm the com port via windoz - I hate to say that. You may have to link the port to /dev/modem.

Alternatively, try ls -l /dev/modem to find out the com port. You can also do things like ls -l /dev/ttyS2, etc. All from Command line. The latter gives the c 4 68 part of it. Also see man pages on ls. Watch the spaces in the code.

Two other handy pieces of code, from cmnd line as su:

mknod /devttyS2 c 4 68 Here S2 is COM3, etc.
(this sets S2)

ln -s /dev/ttyS2 /dev/modem Links e.g. S2 to /dev/modem"

On the second thought, peterh, maybe you are a victime of so called "psudo-hardware" modem. I think that today there is no hardware modems with intel chipset. Some manufacturer put word "hardware" on the box, but you need driver for this modem any way. Sad, but true. I have personal experience with Sweex "hardware" modem = intel 536ep, wich is winmodem and need driver.