[buug] PC Card Modems?

[Claude Rubinson]

My girlfriend recently accidentally destroyed her PC Card modem.  
(Tripped over the phone line which yanked out the modem and mangled it.  
Kinda funny but not pretty.  The modem that is; not the girlfriend.
Girlfriend's pretty.  And funny.  Anyhow...)  So I'm looking at picking up
a new one.  Two questions:

First, does anyone have a used pcmcia modem that they're looking to sell?

Second, I always thought that all pcmcia modems were hardware-based
(specifically, that all would work without problem under Linux).  But
looking into pcmcia modems on the web, I was surprised to see that U.S.
Robotics is now selling PC Card Winmodems.  And even their regular 56K PC
Card Modem says "Modem is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows 98, and
Windows 95. (This product will not work in MS-DOS shell or non-Microsoft
operating systems.)"  A bit different from the standard "This product was
designed for Windows" note.

One additionally oddity - the specs for both US Robotics modems (win and
regular) are virtually identical.  The only significant different that I
noted is that the winmodem lists a power requirement of 30mA.  Everything
else is the same.  For the curious (or bored), specs are available here:
winmodem:  
http://www.usr.com/products/laptop/laptop-product.asp?type=specs&sku=3CCM356
regular modem:
http://www.usr.com/products/laptop/laptop-product.asp?type=specs&sku=3CP003057

I'm certainly no expert in pcmcia, so I'm a bit confused.  Are there now
pcmcia winmodems?  Or is this just a marketing thing?  Are all pcmcia
modems (still) safe under Linux?

Thanks,

Claude