Well deciding that a serial modem was the way to go i bought one which
arrived today. I've got efax-gtk to work but it does suffer flow
control problems when one sends more than a couple of pages. I don't
know if this is common with a hardware modem but i had similar
problems when i first started using the internet in 1999 with a pci
hardware modem.

I changed to a software one and i have to say that until using
broadband in 2006 i didn't have a single glitch with internet access
or faxing. So i was disappointed that i couldn't get the software one
to work.