In the past IRQ 5 was often used but today IRQ 5 is also used for sound cards. It can set them into the PnP BIOS's flash memory where they will be used to configure for Linux as well as Windows. For Windows3.x you can do the same thing using the ICU under Windows 3.x. See What is Setserial for more info. See the next subsection All Modems for further instructions on quick installation.
All Modems Plug the modem into a telephone line.
Then start up a communication program such as minicom and go to the configuration menu for the serial port. Assign it a high baud rate a few times higher than the bit rate of your modem. Now you need to save these settings and exit minicom.