"Their arrival heralded a new age of communications and they played a major role in the explosion of the internet. We're talking, of course, about modems. Here we look back on the development of this remarkable device."
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Member since:
2005-12-15
Member since:2005-11-15
Member since:
2009-04-23
what do you mean history I am using a modem right now...
Opera helps a bit with compression a lot better than those turbo softwares dialup companies were giving out...
If only the fcc would crack down on price abuse by broadband companies ($20 is the limit IMO) and force them to substantially upgrade thier infrastructure at least to 1Gb fiber to the road and much larger trunk lines
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-13
Been on DSL since 1999... would never go back to modems. If I were thinking about moving into a new house or a new city, and they didn't have broadband in the area, that would be a deal breaker.
In regard to modems, although I've tried to understand what a lot of those AT commands do (like when you're getting zmodem transfers terminated because too many CRC errors, and you're trying to make that not happen), it just makes my brain hurt. Has anybody ever written a guide for these that is actually written in English?
AT&D0 DTR is assumed on
AT&K0 Disable flow control
AT&&S0 Force DSR on
Great, that's helpful... thanks 
Edited 2009-12-28 11:37 UTC
Member since:2006-07-18
A Google search for "at command set reference" turned up this: http://nemesis.lonestar.org/reference/telecom/modems/
It should have everything you ever wanted to know about modems and the AT command set.
Member since:2006-07-14
Uhhm... What do you call the think that you plug your phone line into ? I think you mean that you would never go back to a voice band modem. A dsl modem pretty much does the same exact thing ( modulates demodulates signals over standard phone lines ) but in a different band.
Regarding the AT commands, there are several references online.
Wikipedia is a good start, with many links for further info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set
I used to be fluent, but I'm really rusty at this point. I remember zmodem being good, but something like kermit was better.
Edit: Kermit was better for unreliable lines. If you have a lot of problems ( crc errors), give it a try. If you have a better connection, z- modem is much faster.
Edited 2009-12-28 18:51 UTC
Member since:
2009-06-18
I remember back in the heyday of AOL's popularity, there was a special ping command you could use under Linux where you could specify the data to send.
The command sent the hex equivalent of "+++ATH0" so when you sent the ping, the remote system would translate that back to ASCII and once it hit the modem on the return, it would of course drop the modem to command mode and hang it up.
I remember hooking up Trumpet Winsock with my ISP at the time (which was a nice UNIX system to mess around with initially), and got my web browser connecting around the internet for the first time.
Member since:
2006-07-19
"It took 14 years, from 1980 until 1994, for the speed of the modem to develop from 14.4Kpbs to 28.9Kbps but it was only two years later, in 1996, that Brent Townshend came up with the technology for the 56k modem."
I'm sorry, but I had a Telebit Trailblazer and Worldblazer before 1994 so I was cooking at well over 28.9Kbps prior to 1994. The base speed was 14.4K but with the trellis coding and Worldblazers on both ends you could reach 112Kbps. At that time Portal.com was running both and you could really fly.
Member since:2005-07-07
Is that true? I remember getting a US Robotics 14.4 modem probably sometime between 92 and 94 and I thought it was new technology. I had been using a 4800 modem until then.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Ah those were the days. I remember when I first started using Linux (looplinux in '98 or so) I had no idea about chat scripts, etc and would manually fire up minicom, type the AT commands to dial my ISP and log in. At that point it would fire PPP back at me and I would have to frantically quit and launch PPPD by hand.
A few years later I was back online using Napster, and like many others at the time, would download music and movies. I distinctly remember downloading Matrix 2 (cam) using my 33k modem. I only had free off peak calls so I would leave it on overnight for days. Every morning I would wake up and watch the extra 10 minutes (!) it had downloaded in that time before work.
Of course, I eventually got fed up and watched it at the cinema anyway.
Member since:
2005-07-08
Anyone (else) who is feeling nostalgic for modems right now would probably also be interesting in watching Jason Scott's amazing "BBS: The Documentary"...all six hours of it.
Open source content too, so you can legally download the documentary, although they did a GREAT job on the DVD set.
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/
Jason also archives textfiles.com, which contains most of the old BBS content. I love looking up my old boards in the phone lists...
