I find I've accumulated a lot of modems..

[Keatah]

I find I've accumulated a lot of modems.. For the PC, and a few for the Apple II. Both internal and external. Boxed USR. Boxed Hayes Smartmodems, Supras, Practical Peripherals.. The usual fare of the late 80's and early 1990's when modems seemed to be increasing in performance before they topped out at 56K.

 

About 30 in total, and I didn't even try. They just kinda-sorta slowly accumulated. I haven't the slightest how that happened. I swear it!

 

[Ransom]

Well, you never know when you might need to modulate or demodulate something.

[SIO2]

I have actually used a modem recently. There are a few (very few) dial up BBS left.

 

Someone gave me a Bocamodem and I had the urge to watch the LEDs flicker like BITD.

 

It is kind of nice to see your data coming at you.

 

You need to hook one of your modems up Keatah.

Edited July 12, 2016 by SIO2

[iKarith]

The issue with modems is not so much a matter of having something you care to call, but having a phone line with which to do it. There's plenty of folks setting up socket-based ("telnet") BBSes that could just as easily be done over real phone lines more easily than ever before. Assuming of course you could actually get the modem signal to work over a modern voice line. 33.6k is plenty fast enough since we no longer depend on these things for what we now use other file-transfer services for.

[SIO2]

Some folks are still providing real dial up access. I called a BBS that runs on a C= 64 at 2400bps. For text, that is fine by me. My first modem was the XM301 so, 2400bps is rocking right along.

[Keatah]

Modems always were a special romance for me. Remote digital telecommunications, heady stuff for kid around 1978-1984.

 

Yeh, when I got my first Hayes MicroModem II and connected it up I really genuinely had no idea what I would find and discover on the other end. They were a gateway into the unknown!

 

It was especially moody and cool when it was raining and getting dark. Modem, junk food, Lunar Lander, and learning to read full-length sci-fi novels were among the best of times when we got tired of playing vidyagamez.

 

In fact, if anyone knows of any decent sci-fi stories revolving around modems and telecommunications I want to hear about it!

Edited July 13, 2016 by Keatah

[carlsson]

The catch phrase "Who you gonna call?" might apply both to modem users and ghost busters.

[+nanochess]

I've fond memories of modems my best ones where a Bart Simpson image made with ANSI escape sequences, I was simply astonished, never could I find it again.

[Flojomojo]

It occurs to me that I hve unlimited domestic calling on my (very idle) landline. Maybe I should get a modem to dial out (to ...somewhere?) in case my internet service goes out. But nope! They're dependent on each other.

 

Part of me wants to dial some BBSes just because I can, though.

 

I don't think I even have a single modem in the house. Even my Dreamcast is the Asian version that didn't come with a modem. Perhaps I could scrounge an ancient iBook or similar from freecycle.

[82-T/A]

I would love to call a BBS again... it's just not the same doing it through TelNet...

 

I mean, I guess technically it is the same after you physically log into it... but there's just something about dialing that modem and doing it over the phone.

[spacecadet]

Ah, I remember when modems were objects of art to argue over and even lust after like any other piece of PC equipment. When I had my original Apple II, if you had a real Hayes Smartmodem, you were one of the cool kids. (Well, among kids who dug computers, anyway.) Hayes was to modems what IBM was to computers; expensive and professional (and the originator of a standard). The Smartmodem 2400 cost like $550 and that was in 1985 or something. Fast forward about 10 years - I had one of those and threw it out when I got my USR 56k modem.

 

The only modem I think I still own is a huge 2400 baud modem that's basically shaped like a Hayes Smartmodem but I think might actually be bigger. I can't remember offhand what brand it is. I don't even remember where or when I got it; obviously I did use various modems with my Apple II but when I took everything out of the box I keep stashed in the attic last time, I remember thinking "what the heck is this?!" It doesn't look like any of the modems I remember from my childhood, so I may have picked it up with some other more recent purchase and just shoved it in that box. It's the kind of thing that often just comes with a used computer purchase these days, even though it's not something that adds any value for me.

Edited July 13, 2016 by spacecadet

[Keatah]

110/300 baud speeds were very reliable.

1200/2400/9600 baud modems need some fiddling with, like redialing till you got a "clear" line.

 

And then, seemingly (IIRC) things improved markedly in the 14.4, 28.8, 33.6 ranges. The connections held nicely and always connected at a fast speed.

 

When 56.6 K-Flex & X2 blew into town I rarely ever got above 40K. The adoption of v.90 improved things a little, but I didn't care, I was stuck like a loser on AOL + win 3.1.

 

Then I got a cable modem, and all the romance died.

 

In any case I'm canceling going out this weekend. I'm gonna collect all the modems I can find into one area and find my original in boxed Procomm Plus. I have 2 versions of it.

[carlsson]

@82-T/A: I suppose one difference is that with dial-up, you often pay per minute (at least we used to do over here), so you're not as lazy while being connected, as you would be with an Internet connection where you either pay a monthly cost or are debited per GB rather than time spent online. I suppose a small, private BBS also may have limited number of ingoing lines so you would not want to block it for other users, which usually is not a matter with telnet based BBS:es.

[+OLD CS1]

110/300 baud speeds were very reliable.

1200/2400/9600 baud modems need some fiddling with, like redialing till you got a "clear" line.

 

And then, seemingly (IIRC) things improved markedly in the 14.4, 28.8, 33.6 ranges. The connections held nicely and always connected at a fast speed.

 

When 56.6 K-Flex & X2 blew into town I rarely ever got above 40K. The adoption of v.90 improved things a little, but I didn't care, I was stuck like a loser on AOL + win 3.1.

 

Then I got a cable modem, and all the romance died.

 

In any case I'm canceling going out this weekend. I'm gonna collect all the modems I can find into one area and find my original in boxed Procomm Plus. I have 2 versions of it.

 

14.4kbps and up use various forms of error correction. Between that and rotational modulation, a lot can be accomplished in the selected range phone systems use within human hearing. KFlex and X2 do some really cool things to achieve high speed which were dependent upon the quality of the line, though not as much as xDSL (bridge taps, high impedance, etc,) though more than one PAD and pretty much forget it. Oh, if you have X2 on both ends of the line you can actually max out the line speed to 56k, irrespective of FCC limits on device transmit power.

 

v.90 was a good leap over the older 56k protocols, though X2 still beat it out under certain conditions. Especially since so much of v.90 was made optional to alleviate CPU load of software-based "WinModems." Of course almost all of the optional bits deal with line conditions (simplistically speaking.) v.92 incorporates algorithms developed for satellite systems, giving really good compression and condition tolerance.

 

Anyway, enough of that. Oh, I found this some time ago.

 

[Keatah]

In thinking about modems over the years. What is your preference regarding the following:

 

1- WinModem - reduced partcount, cheap, easier upgradability, uses software and host CPU resources to "complete" the package.

2- Controller based - Has its own CPU onboard, and doesn't depend on host CPU for internal management, generally faster, more OS independent

 

3- External - needs serial port and power brick, easily swapped out, "fun to look at" status lights, more compatible across a wider range of hardware.

4- Internal - not prone to theft or breakage, smaller, plug and play and forget, specific to one computer/bus.

 

5- Acoustic coupler - great for travelers of the day.

6- Direct connect - higher speeds, the standard in the modern modem.

 

 

[Ransom]

I always bought controller-based, external, direct-connect modems whenever possible. The only time I'd get something else was when the specific use case favored it.

 

Of course, like any true geek, I have a fondness for acoustic couplers...but it's just a nostalgic thing. They were actually a pain to use, and required a standard AT&T handset in order to have any chance of working.

[Keatah]

Likewise.. Controller based for the win. Internal? External? Didn't matter too much. Internal was easier for a kid to set up. External was cooler with the lights.

 

I'm not sure where the early Apple II modems fit in.

[SIO2]

No to WinModem. External for me. I like the lights.

 

I once had a Motorola external 33.6k modem that I was crazy fond of. Now, I don't even remember why I liked it so much.

[+OLD CS1]

External or internal, controller-based. Now, in the Commodore and Amiga world, externals were it. I had an old Wang which looked like a Hayes that I liked a lot. I had a Motorola 33.6k eventually that was rounded and not square so it did not sit in a stack very well (I always hated that as space was a premium.) But it worked great. Then on to a 56k USRobotics Sportster.

 

Now, I do have two TI 300 baud acoustic couplers. I have an experiment in mind for those when I have time.

 

At the ISP where I worked in 1999 to 2002, we would often replace WinModems with USR internals (5770, IIRC.) These things were rock solid, handled all sorts of line conditions, and not that expensive at $89. I started a "Lightning Special" to replace modems which had been taken out by the frequent lightning storms we get around here: a USR internal 56k v.92 modem and a seven-outlet surge suppressor with telephone protection, $109 installed and configured.

 

Customer: "When I try to connect is says NO DIAL TONE." Yeah, lightning, baby.

[Keatah]

The Apple-Cat II and Hayes Micromodem II were good for the day. They were among the first modems for the Apple II and a blast. Going from snail mail to 300 to 1200 was quite impressive. Instead of taking several days, 300 baud allowed sending a 143K byte image in just a couple of hours. 1200 baud was equally impressive, it blew by in less than a half'n hour! Blow me away!

 

Later on I got a Supra 2400 for the Amiga and was not impressed. Despite the speed increase from 1200 to 2400. Transfer time per disk wasn't going down because they had increased to 880K.

 

Then on the PC I got this http://atariage.com/forums/topic/233754-what-did-you-buy-today/?p=3551893

..and was not impressed, because disk images were up to 1.44MB. But text files and documents zoomed by at unheard of speeds.

 

Moving along my dialup topped out at 56K with a Supra Express ISA modem. And, you guessed it, not impressed. We now had the Internet replete with all the bullshit it generates.

 

And today, with cable modems, the speed is faster than ever. But just as frustrating because we have even more bullshit to wade through.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Keatah

[Ransom]

Sure, but you can download a .DSK in no time.

[jhd]

In thinking about modems over the years. What is your preference regarding the following:

 

5- Acoustic coupler - great for travelers of the day.

 

I have never used one -- I started with a 1200 baud internal modem in a PC -- but can an acoustic coupler go above 300 baud?

[Keatah]

Theoretically yes, however 110-150-300 baud was the norm for the vast majority. A lot of things would have to be just right for them operate at a higher speed.

[spacecadet]

In terms of what I thought at the time - and there were good reasons for these conclusions - I'll say the following:

 

1 - Controller-based all the way, so performance of the computer itself would not be affected.

 

2 - External, both for easy portability between computers and for all the LED's (which were pretty important for diagnostics in the 80's)

 

3 - Direct connect - acoustic modems looked cool (even in the 80's) but just didn't support high speeds and weren't reliable.

 

I think most of the reasoning still holds up, although if you were going to use a dial-up modem with a modern Windows system, then I'm sure any current CPU would be able to handle an internal Winmodem no problem. But in the days when dial-up was really a thing, Winmodems could really adversely affect performance. I did know a lot of people who had internal (controller-based) modems for computers like the Apple II and IBM PC in the early days, but they were considered cheaper alternatives to external modems because they lacked the LED's. And without a GUI of any sort, you really had no idea what was going on without those.

 

Also, in those days my experience is that I would often carry my modem around to use on different computers for whatever reason. Not every computer had a modem, so if I was going to a friend's house or even to school or something, I'd often bring my modem with me so I could get online. That meant external.

[Keatah]

I rarely transported my modem(s) back in the day, and even ever. I figured we wouldn't be sitting around watching data transfer. We'd be a-copying and playing games. Modems were for use at home in the quiet evening hours. When the radiation of the sun wasn't beating on the wires. Clear channel and all that.