Your personal modem history, what was it like?

[potatohead]

Mine begins with a "fast" 300 baud, upgraded from 110 the year prior, acoustic coupler.  I was in middle school, and listening to the sounds lit my mind on fire!  Hearing the bits made a big impression.   It made me think about radio and how far away stations were like bright stars in an evening sky.

 

Here there were wires, but those sounds could travel in many ways.  Somewhere there was a big timeshare computer giving me a little of its potential.

 

Basically, magic.  And I knew then I was going there.  Did not know how, but I did not care, and I thought about all this and what it might mean for many bus rides, my mind filling with crazy visions of a world where this magic gets performed regularly.

 

Soon, I had an Apple computer in my bedroom next to a souped up 48k Atari 400 with better keyboard installed.  This was a bog standard Hayes.  My Atari lacked the serial needed, but the Apple had it on a card.  So, I started BBS'ing on that machine.

 

Later, I got an internet account as part of my work.  I used other people's gear too.  This was my first real Internet connection.  All mine, and paid for too!  I got started with an Amstrad PC with CGA graphics and some hard card installed.

 

The PC was a POS, but it had 640k RAM, two floppy drives in addition to a 10MB hard card.  YUGE!  But slow and ugly graphically.  16 color text was spiffy and made early dial into a UNIX shell account fun to do.  I used Procom to dial up and get online.

 

This was all pre web.  

 

A short time after that, I got some really cool 9600 baud modem that needed special lines at the ISP to work.  They had a couple, which freed two lines for the handful of us at 9600 and above.

 

USENET at 9600 was amazing!  And that speed made pulling games off ftp.funet.fi viable too.  My ISP also offered disk transfer offline.  You asked for a larger storage quota, fetched it onto the UNIX machines there, then a person could swing by to talk shop and get data copied onto a variety of supported devices.

 

I loved that and used it a time or two.  Fun.

 

This went on for a while into 1990.  In 91, I got online proper using a PPP connection.  First real session with no shell and such needed.  I was online with my own POS PC.  I used the apple very little now.  Was good for conversation and email, but that was was it.

 

Did some side gigs on that Amstrad and scored some crap 386 PC with 5Mb RAM.  Loaded Win 3.11, winsock and got it online, dialup at 14.4.  I do not remember the name of that cheap ass, cpu munching modem, but it worked well enough.

 

USENET continued to be my go to, but I was also exploring lots of stuff.

 

When I could get a browser, 14.4 started to be painful and so I stepped up to a killer external 56k modem.  US Robotics.

 

The Amstrad and 9600 baud machine went to someone going to school, and I got better PC machines, build your own style.

 

I used the crap out of that 56k, until DSL.  More magic!  Suddenly, I could push 100kbytes / second out of my home and get close to a Megabyte coming in.

 

I continued to dial up on the road for quite some time, close to the 00's.  Used Juno free and a laptop from Micron featuring a built in 56k CPU munchery, but that laptop was fast enough running win 98 to avoid most worries.

 

Today, I do not have a modem of any kind.

[doctor_x]

On 11/9/2018 at 11:34 PM, Keatah said:

Let us give vintage modems some love. Like printers, these often despised and evil peripherals got their name from being slow and causing our systems to be tied up for hours on end. But they also allowed the beginnings of digital telecom for the home. They enabled services such as The Source, Compuserve, Prodigy, early America Online, and personal BBS'es. Even practical personal banking. And that's not to mention the professional/industrial uses. And they would usher in the internet.

 

So what was your personal modem history, what was it like? What modem(s) did you have back in the day? Tell us some stories and list what you owned.

 

Hayes Micromodem II

..for my Apple II in the 70's and very early 80's. It ran at 110/300 baud (Bell 103 standard) and came in two pieces, an internal card and an external electrical coupler/relay box. Not an acoustic coupler. It came with a nice manual that was practically a tutorial on telecommunications. Today it great nostalgic reference.

 

I did tons of wardialing with this spent many a quiet-evening into the early hours watching it dial out. The little red light flashing on and off to indicate off-hook status. It was equally thrilling to sit around and read astronomy books while WaReZ would come in from some far off distant, nebulous land, which only had form in our imaginations. It took somewhere between 1.25 - 1.50 hours to transfer a full Apple II floppy. Or in perhaps more familiar terms. 1 minute to send Atari VCS Combat cartridge. Or a full day for a ~3MB digital photo.

 

Things like X-Modem, Y-Modem, or Z-Modem were important. Because the amount of ACK they would or wouldn't do - some were faster in some situations. Some would require a restart at the 11th hour when a disk was almost done. Some would auto-restart from the last packet. And some worked better at certain times of the day/night when the lines were "clear".

 

There were little or no hacks for this modem. Nor did it become "famous" and desired like the future Apple-Cat II. But many programs did support it as a matter of default. In fact I always thought most modems were well supported back in the day.

 

Some innovative software like DFX II had been written with this modem in mind. This would allow two-way realtime typing while a transfer happened in the background. It also allowed you to transfer Hi-Res pictures and see them as they arrived. It took many minutes to see it form on the screen however.

 

And of course there was the venerable workhorse of ASCII Express, known as AE. It was nice terminal, and pirates found out how to make AE Lines out of it. Basically it was a simple BBS that let you catalog/send/receive files remotely. AutoAnswer, leave message, and ChatSysop were other basic functions. All a pirate would ever need BITD.

 

I had lots of imaginary fun with this modem, like calling the Voyager 2 spacecraft directly! I even built circuits to help me do that. And trying to use it as a voice-recognition card and goldfish communicator. And it was fun to write stories about it all. Hey! I was a kid then! This modem was responsible for some $400 phone bills. And for launching lots of imaginary flights of fancy. But I did call into JPL for real and got pictures from Voyager 2 that way.

 

Novation Apple-Cat II

I recall getting this for the Apple II+ and //e sometime in 1980 or 1981. From Northbrook Computers. I explained to my parents that the lines would be less tied up and I could finish more quickly. I picked this modem because I liked the name. Second only to speed. Little did I know it would have a cult following with all kinds of hackers writing all kinds of amusing tools and utilities for it - including a music player, a sound recorder, a voice recognition card, DTMF encoder-decoder, BOX simulator, and even a realtime accurate clock that worked off the timing of the modem circuitry. This pseudo-clock was a step above a software clock which lost accuracy during disk access. It was a step below a real clock card because it lost time when powered off. But it was FREE!! And clock cards made your BBS "elite" back in the day. To see current time on the screen was near magical!

 

Moving up to 1200 baud (half-duplex) was a godsend, and despite being only half-duplex it worked well. Game trading was usually a one-direction affair anyways. And 300 or 1200 baud was fine for text purposes anyways.

 

As I read through the manual and examined the card I found it had all sorts of connections on it. It had 2 empty slots for chips like DTMF and Hayes-like firmware. I got the firmware right away. But the DTMF decoder would come later because of cost. I rather quickly upgraded this with the 212 expansion card. This allowed full-duplex Bell 212 communications, 1200 baud both ways simultaneously! Incredible.

 

It had a handset connector for voice/talk. It had an RS-232 connector for external RS-232 port. A tape-recorder controller, BSR interface, and of course the 212 card connector. And possibly more I'm forgetting at this very second.

 

That's a lot of stuff. Not only could I expand the host computer as usual, I could expand its telecom subsystem.

 

This became a workhorse modem for me and it was supported by plenty of hacker-written tools, many of which were nicely done. And ProTerm supported it along with ASCII Express.

 

SupraModem 2400

I got this modem likely sometime in the 1986-1987 timeframe. Right after I got the Amiga 500. I got it not because I wanted speed, but because I wanted a way to get Amiga games. It never worked out like for the Apple II. Nor was it as magical or inspiring. I was out of high-school by then and my network of Apple II buddies quickly dissipated. And there were little or no local BBS numbers to call. By this time I couldn't get away with $500 phone bills anymore either. And so this modem didn't see a lot of usage.

 

It was 2400 baud of course, and it was noticeably faster especially with Z-Modem protocol. And that I found intriguing. I was unclear if it did data compression or not, but Z-Modem was quicker than the X or Y protocols.

 

It was my first all-serial-interface and external modem and thus felt somewhat less integrated than the Apple II solutions. It felt somewhat disconnected from everything (no pun intended). It was my first real introduction to the AT-command set. And to a kid discovering cars and women, it was rather hard to concentrate on learning it all. And most Amiga telecom packages (being new too) didn't always get it right. Nor did the packages handle any Supra specific registers or codes. It was barely enough to dial out and get "online". The whole Amiga telecom experience was rather disjointed and I felt that none of the pieces truly fit together. There was a lot of extraneous "stuff" that didn't apply. There was a lot of bloat and useless things. Things that only a freeware author could love. I didn't like all-of-a-sudden having to deal with the AT command set. Never had that nonsense before on the Apple II.

 

It was a solidly built and reliable modem however. And I liked the row of status lights. I wished my first two modems had such a display. All in all it was the right modem paired to the wrong machine.

 

Practical Peripherals PM14400FX

In 1992/1993 when I was getting going with the MS-DOS world and PCs in earnest I got my first PC, it was a 486 from Gateway 2000. A rather nice IBM-PC clone. I remember I had to keep the price around $2,100 and no more. So therefore I did not get a modem with it, or even a soundcard or videocard. I would get those as the system arrived. I got the videocard first. A massive 1MB Cirrus Logic 5422 based board, the memory was massive not the board. Well..

 

My SupraModem 2400 filled in till I could get something internal for the machine. I always liked internal modems for some reason or other. Probably because I grew up with them on the Apple II. And they felt integrated and part of the machine.

 

One bright sunny day I would come home from CompUSA with this PM14400FX. You may have guessed it was a 14.4K baud modem. I had found my dream modem! It did everything all my other modems had done and more. And it was internal and fit in a standard ISA slot. I farted around with some shareware terminals, and they were pretty good. This PM modem handled it all and the Hayes AT-command set seemed well supported on the terminal and the hardware side. I was BBS'ing in no time. There were tons of PC-based boards to call. And 14.4K baud even let me call long distance for short amounts of time, expanding my choices even further all the while keeping connection costs down below $200.

 

I liked this modem because it felt all-integrated, it was not one of the yet-to-come winmodems. And it had a simulated on-screen LED status display. I eventually somehow got ProComm Plus and it was like having a full-blown modem control center. A central-ops kind of thing. Not unlike how I dreamed about having on the Apple II. I did lots of online one-on-one gaming with Doom and Duke3D. All the AT-command codes were handled behind the scenes.

 

The box and packaging were great. A full color pic of the actual modem on the front, and all the specifications and features on the back. Something you do not find today.

 

Minus the magic and glory of a child's imagination this modem did everything I expected and more. This modem had some of the best user documentation I had seen to date. And being in the PC ecosphere it was supported by everything.

 

Supra Express 56K Modem

This was one of my fastest and last modems I would purchase. The Practical Peripherals modem made no mention of the internet, and that in 1992/1993. In 1997/1998 this 56K modem mentioned it all over the box, but not as flamboyantly as some of the consumer-grade U.S. Robotics stuff did.

 

I liked this modem, because again, it was feature-complete. It supported all the protocols like V. and Bell all the way back to 300 baud. Not that I was doing much with 300 baud in 1997. I got this modem because it was piled sky-high in BigBox, right near the door too. Imagine that today! Anyways, I had tried doing internet on the 14.4 modem, but too slow. This new 56.6 modem handled America Online seemingly just fine. And I kept it in service to about 2001/2002 at which point I got a cable modem.

 

As the internet was getting underway, there were three standards for speed. This modem supported all the old standards and K56Flex and V90. But not X2 which was a USR standard. I could handle having three standards but it seemed like the first annoying break in PC compatibility (in the consumer arena). Some products supported either K56Flex or V90 or X2. I suppose I was lucky to get one that could upgrade to V90. And eventually V90 became widely accepted.

 

I'm sure standards competed in other aspects and subsystems of the PC ecosphere, but this was one noted by everyday consumers more than ever.

 

I loved AOL, it introduced me to the internet. And every one of the categories I clicked on was one big adventure after another. After than I pretty much stopped bothering with individual BBSes and therefore didn't do many file transfers at 56K speeds.

 

It was the last traditional phone-line modem I bought.

 

END

By now the modem had become a necessary commodity and the industry looked at ways to integrate modems into laptop motherboards and such. And they started showing up as $29 riser-type cards. Thus was born the "Winmodem". A bastardized hybrid mix of software and hardware - a little before its time. They relied on the main CPU to do a lot of the timing and protocol handling, and all that remained was physical interface to the phone line. And they required OS specific drivers and layers. A "softmodem" if you will. And it took a noticeable amount of CPU power (back then) to run them. Today it wouldn't be a problem, and we have "soft" LAN, Sound, and many other things taken over by software in lieu of dedicated hardware. Or rather hardware on the CPU & Chipset itself.

 

My first two modems were genuinely magical, the Hayes Micromodem II and Apple-Cat II. Magical because a whole new world of technology was opening up. As time went on, they became less magical and more commonplace.

 

Eventually in 2001-2002 I would get a cablemodem and at that point paid no attention to QAM or any sort of protocol layers, OSI layers, or anything technical. Plugged it in and it was gofast.

 

A few years back I purchased a few of the vintage USR modems, ones I wanted as a kid and never could afford. Just cool to have, cool to look at and contemplate. Same thing with some of the iconic Aluminum ingot Hayes SmartModems.

Do you recall what wardialing software you preferred? I never had an apple back during that time.. I was an atari 8 bit guy but I did CRAZY wardialing and handscanning searching for "odd and interesting numbers and tones"...

 

I have the apple cat 212 and the little breakout box... Looking for the firmware upgrade chip...

[desiv]

I won't remember a lot of this.

My first modem was a 300 baud modem I got for my Vic-20 at Federated Superstores (I think).  

Might have been a VicModem, but more likely some 3rd party on sale...  

When I got my SX-64, I ended up getting a pair of modems.  They came with QLink, so I got 2.  One for the family C64 and one for my SX-64 so I could stay in touch with the family without paying long distance. 

That worked well, but then I sold the SX-64 to partially pay for my Amiga 500 system.

I got a 1200 Amiga Modem (with it???  or after?  I can't remember...)

At some point in time, I found out we didn't live too far from a company that sold modems.  Aprotek I think.

So I got a 2400 baud from them.

I also got an XT around that time (still had the Amiga) and went thru various generic PC modems.  I think I was at 2400 baud for a while, until I got a Sportster 14.4k?  

I don't think I ever ran the Amiga 500 over 2400 baud.  I think all the faster modems were for the PC line as I upgraded them.  Mostly as I "upgraded" peoples PCs and they let me keep the old stuff.

 

I eventually ended up with a 33.6k external of some type (another Sportster?) that I used with my Amiga 1200 when I got that.

 

I did eventually get a software based Windows Modem that was a 56k one.  Although there weren't a lot of ISPs that supported 56k in the area.  I think it usually connected at 33.6k.

 

I think I still have one of those Sportsters in a drawer somewhere, or I used to????

 

I did a LOT of BBSing.  FIDOnet!  QLink, some Compuserve.

 

One nice thing about getting tech support jobs (full time ones) was that several times, I was able to setup dial in so I could support them remotely.  And of course that gave me internet too... So there were several years that I didn't have to pay for an ISP.

Which was good because there were other times when I used "free" ISPs that were kind of painful sometimes.  

Juno Internet I think?  NetZero....

 

Fun times..

 

Oh!  I forgot the Acoustic Coupler I made for the Model 100 I had.  That was actually after I had my Amiga 500 and PCs, so it wasn't my primary modem.  But I used it from time to time to check things...

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by desiv

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, doctor_x said:

Do you recall what wardialing software you preferred? I never had an apple back during that time.. I was an atari 8 bit guy but I did CRAZY wardialing and handscanning searching for "odd and interesting numbers and tones"...

 

I have the apple cat 212 and the little breakout box... Looking for the firmware upgrade chip...

I had so many of those things. With so many generic names. Probably something like WarCat, DemonDialer, Metro-Hacker, Joshua ][, MicroDialer, and a whole bunch of other things me and buddies wrote up. They were easy enough for anyone just learning BASIC to figure out.

 

The firmware file is likely available at ftp asimov but of course you'd need to burn it.

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

They were easy enough for anyone just learning BASIC to figure out.

This is what I did on the Commodore 64.  I also programmed in randomization and an exception list so I could skip published numbers of law enforcement and emergency agencies to avoid knocks at my door.  Even so, a deputy showed up at my work one day with four complaints of hang-ups from my number.  I just told him I had my computer set to call a list of BBSes I had and the list must be out-dated.

[doctor_x]

On 3/22/2020 at 1:30 AM, OLD CS1 said:

This is what I did on the Commodore 64.  I also programmed in randomization and an exception list so I could skip published numbers of law enforcement and emergency agencies to avoid knocks at my door.  Even so, a deputy showed up at my work one day with four complaints of hang-ups from my number.  I just told him I had my computer set to call a list of BBSes I had and the list must be out-dated.

What year was that - when the cop showed up for annoyance calls after only 4 reports????

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 minute ago, doctor_x said:

What year was that - when the cop showed up for annoyance calls after only 4 reports????

 

If telco security was involved, it could conceivably happen.  <Insert Telco Here> flags 'suspicious' calls from a particular number, calls the local cops, local cops go find out what's going on.  All that has to happen is that AT&T (or whomever) makes a big enough deal out of it and the cops basically end up making the 'knock it off' visit on their behalf.

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, doctor_x said:

What year was that - when the cop showed up for annoyance calls after only 4 reports????

Believe that would have been around '95 or '96.

 

1 hour ago, x=usr(1536) said:

If telco security was involved, it could conceivably happen.  <Insert Telco Here> flags 'suspicious' calls from a particular number, calls the local cops, local cops go find out what's going on.  All that has to happen is that AT&T (or whomever) makes a big enough deal out of it and the cops basically end up making the 'knock it off' visit on their behalf.

It is possible.  This was around the time CenTel was purchased by Sprint so they could have brought in some new security people or policies.  The deputy showed up with three note or log cards with the individuals' complaints.  My program dialed numbers at random within exchanges, and moved randomly between exchanges, with random intervals between calls.  The idea was to avoid telco suspicion for sequential numbers and repeated calling, but I would think the technology of the time could have detected my activity.

 

Anyway, I told him my story and he left.  I waited a couple of days and fired it up again, but after running for a few days the number of connections was small enough I got bored with it.  I have been digging through some old disks to see if I can find the program without success.

[doctorclu]

15 hours ago, doctor_x said:

What year was that - when the cop showed up for annoyance calls after only 4 reports????

Luckily I missed 90s BBSing and all the pirate boards getting locked down and raided.  I was busy with college at the time..

 

So for me and BBSing started in I believe '81 using a 300 baud 1030 modem, and I want to say I called the Dal-ACE BBS (in Dallas naturally).   Many BBSs followed, many Atari (JYBOLAC, INTACT, Psyclos Empire, The Equalizer BBS, the Danger Room, OA (my short lived BBS), NCC-1701, Sgt. Pepper's BBS, and The Ice Palace?) and called a few other BBSs where they had continue the story boards (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, MaR MaR's Place, The Unknown BBS).   I quickly left 300 baud and was using 1200/2400 before long.   Four to eight times the speed baby!! 

 

BBSing from there I called BBSs while on Guam in '94-'95, when I got back I was on Chrysalis (a multi-line BBS with IRC, email, and telnet).   Got back into Ft. Worth and Dallas BBS scenes around '99.   Was on Collin County Station in the early 2000's, and over time got on the Prison Board BBS around 2006 which I used for dialup in Dallas and telneting out to other Atari BBS's of the now (Boot Factory, Dark Forces).   Though the Prison Board BBS does not have it's own dialup line, there is a service that is creating a dial-in point that connects to internet BBSs.

 

And here in 2020 there are actually quite a few dialup BBSs.   The Backyard BBS and Basement BBSs are Atari run.

 

So shed the beards and false teeth, get a modem, get a phone line "that can handle a fax machine" (as I had to tell AT&T when I was getting a line installed) and give dial-up BBSs a shot!

 

 

[Omega-TI]

My personal modem history started off with a TI Acoustic modem.  It was 300 baud and required you to manually dial the number before connecting and then when connected, setting the telephone in the rubber cups.  It was not so bad at first, because the were very few of us (about 8 people) calling the one and only BBS in town at the time.  The program I used was the Texas Instruments "Terminal Emulator II" cartridge.  The program really sucked because there was no way to save your session for later use, so I used a magnetic pickup on the phone and recorded the sessions to a cassette recorder for later playback through the modem.  I know lame, but back then it's all we had.

 

 

Later, as local activity picked up, I moved up to a 300 baud direct connect modem that would actually dial the number.  I did not keep this modem very long because by then Compu$erve was charging by the minute and their dang menus would not allow direct access to pages, you had to go through others to get to what you wanted.

 

My next modem was a Practical Peripherals 1200SA, that allowed me to download stuff faster from my local BBS, but I only kept this one for a short time as well because when the Practical Peripherals 2400SA came out I jumped on it.  I kept the 2400 baud modem until I got out of the TI-99/4A.

 

 

When I got into the PC I had a stint with an internal 9600 baud modem, but it sucked big time so I moved up to a 14.4 modem then a 28.8 because I was a running a "Point System" on FIDONET and wanted to get my mail packets in a timely fashion.

 

Then the Internet arrived...  and finally my last modem was a USR Robotics 56K Sportster.  After the BBS's died off I chucked this modem as well and have been running routers ever since.

 

 

 

 

[Banquo]

Mine doesn't go back very far, sadly I missed out on the whole BBS era. I was running Windows 98 on my very first PC when we finally got the internet. My first modem was the crappy internal winmodem in my Compaq Presario, but I soon upgraded it to my second and final modem, a US Robotics Courier V.Everything 56k external. I still have that modem out in storage. A few years after that our ISP started offering DSL and that was the end of my dial-up era.

[zzip]

I remember in the beginning modem buying was simple,  it was just what baud are you willing to pay for?   And RS232/with Hayes command set or proprietary solution designed for your computer system.

 

Then by the time the 14,400 went mainstream,  it was WAY more complex.  First you weren't supposed to say 'baud' anymore, it was now 'bps' because of the way signalling worked.   Then they had Fax features,  data compression, error correction and competing standards.   You had to know what standards you needed. 

 

I remember asking "isn't a v.42bis modem better than a v.32bis?"  and being made to feel like an idiot because "v.42 deals with data compression and v.32 deals with speed,  DUH! Everyone knows that!"   But it wasn't like internet was commonplace yet, so finding what those terms meant wasn't trivial.

[Keatah]

I was lucky in the sense I always had good documentation at hand from big names like Novation, Hayes, Supra, Practical Peripherals, and USR. I clearly recall the tutorial style stuff from Hayes and Practical Peripherals.

 

Once the speeds exceeded 9600 I tended to lose interest and focused on other aspects of computing. The modem was now a necessary evil. An appliance. A means to an end..

 

The last "cool" terminal software I used would've been ProComm+ for Windows 3.1 and the various DOS packages of that time. That've been the last time modems felt like modems.

 

[zzip]

16 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Once the speeds exceeded 9600 I tended to lose interest and focused on other aspects of computing. The modem was now a necessary evil. An appliance. A means to an end..

I jumped from 2400 to 14400, so it was a massive speed boost, and with built in data compression, there was now the possibility that it could saturate the 19200 limit on my ST's RS232 port.   That plus newer protocols like Zmodem with automatic download features made downloads much more convenient.   Going to 14,400 made BBSing fun again for me.