Just a note from an old BBS'er. For any platform if you want to interact directly with a modem using its serial port and AT commands the modem has to have a hardware interface. "WinModems" or software driven modems as are common these days won't let you talk to them directly as a serial port. (e.g. from a dos prompt you couldn't do 'echo ATA > COM1' to make it pickup the phone) Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm way off on this -- its been many years since I coded with a modem.