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A Brief History of Modems
Ant points out this two-page TechRadar article about the history of modems; the photographs of some behemoth old modems might give you new respect for just how much is packed into modern wireless devices.
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how much I miss my original mod [NO CARRIER]
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
There are still a few of us left who grew up in the acoustic coupler era, where modems connected to the (back then standardized) handset, and really whistled and purred into the microphone.
Speeds? We started with 110 baud (which back then was equivalent to bits-per-second, if you subtracted stop bits). Then came 300 baud.
Then someone had an epiphany, and figured out that no-one could possibly type faster than 75 characters per second, and even if they could, the printer(!) that spit out whatever you typed wouldn't be able to. So by reserving the low frequencies for upstream data and the high frequencies for downstream, you could achieve the blazing speed of 1200 baud down and 75 baud up. The 1200/75 modem was a workhorse for a long time, with way faster downloads than 300/300 could give.
Then came 1200/1200, 2400/2400, 4800 (which was really 2400 with compression), 9600, and then the Trailblazer, which was running at a ridiculously low baud rate (100 baud IIRC), but at so many parallel channels that it achieved ~18000 bps aggregate. That was lightning fast! Imagine almost 2 kB/s (unless something moved the other way at the same time, in which case speeds of course would drop). The ASCII porn didn't stand a chance against that speed monster!
Then came the short-lived 38400, and finally the ubiquitous 56k modem. Yawn.
In the mid-90s, we got BRI (ISDN, 2*64 kbps in most of the world, 2*56 kbps in the US). Which pretty much ended the modem era, except for in the US and UK, where 56 kbps POTS modems reigned supreme until well after the millennium.
I have mod points to burn but I have to post in here.
The traffic system I worked on had 300 baud modems attached to cheap leased lines (soldered in, mostly). Two modems per card. 8 cards on a bytecraft backplane. Up to 128 modems on a 19 inch rack. Each modem had three LEDs (carrier, TX, RX) and at the speed the system operated you could see the poll/response from the regional controller to the sites and back. In the dark it was a thing of beauty. Computers of old.
If something was wrong in the logic (say a checksum mismatch) then you could see it in the LEDs because one channel (slot) would not follow the nice pulse sequence. Several times I mucked up the checksums of a rack and took out a lot of sites. Maybe I shouldn't post about that...
Going back in time my 6502 system had a modem for the cassette interface. I knew you could overclock the UART and FSK modem driver and I had dreams of using my uncles reel to reel hifi system for storage. Never happened. Though I did find that you could use the cassette player as a sound card of sorts by locking on REC and PLAY.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In "The African Queen," Katherine Hepburn's character asks Humphrey Bogart's character to make a torpedo. Bogart's character says something to the effect that "Lady, there ain't nothing so complicated as the inside of a torpedo. It's got gyroscopes, compressed air chambers, compensating cylinders..."
I remember once reading details about just how the signals in a 1200 bps modem worked... and modems at higher rates. It was just jaw-dropping how sophisticated it was. The reason why there was a distinction between "bps" and "baud" is that "baud" refers to the number of times per second the signal changes. Well, a 1200 bps modem only changes its signal 600 times a second... but it uses four different combinations of frequency and phase, so each signal combination signals two bits. That's bad enough, but the combinations literally increase exponentially. The 9600 bps modem actually requires the receiver to sense and distinguish sixteen different analog combinations (so that it can encode four bits at a time).
At the time I figured they had to be close to the theoretical limit, which depends on the bandwidth and the noise level. A phone line is only good up to about 3000 Hz. so the 2400 baud rate of a 9600 bps modem is changing about as fast as it can. The rest depends on how noisy the line is.
Theoretically, of course, you can signal at an infinite rate on a perfectly noise-free channel. Just send 3.141592653 volts on the end and measure it with a ten-digit digital voltmeter and, voila! You're sending ten digits at once. Except there aren't any ten-digit voltmeters.
I was frankly flabbergasted when they managed to cram 56 kilobits per second into a phone line. Of course, the 56 kb modems never really ran at that speed--they were always falling back to lower speeds because the phone lines were too noisy. Then they added compression, which didn't do much good because the ZIP files and JPGs you were sending were already compressed. In reality they were trying to cram 56 kilobits of data into a 33 kilobit bag, but it was amazing that it even worked some of the time.
But, lady, there ain't nothin' so complicated as the inside of a modem.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The biggest problem with using modems was that you had to let everyone in the house know you were on the "modem". This meant, sticking post-it notes to every phone in the house, so that someone would tell you they needed to use the phone rather than just picking up the phone and dialing. You also couldn't tie up the phone for hours on end. There was very very few people that had an answering service (not an answering machine), like most do today with VOIP or CableCompany Provided Voice.
You also had to remember, if you were one of those people that had it, disable call waiting, as many modems would drop the connection when a call waiting signal came through. I believe you had to add a *70 after the AT.. so you had something like:
Today people can spend all day actively or passively (by leaving the computer on) online. Wit
Otherwise how could you think that v.32bis (14.4k) was introduced in 1980? I had to look it up to see what the hell they were on about, apparently the 1980 figure comes from a break through channel coding paper written in 1980 at IBM that didn't even get passed around for a few years. The reality is that the public had to wait nearly a decade before those techniques were out of the lab, and a few more years before a standard was ratified. Trying to figure out what niche this article fills - the wiki article on modems does a far better job at going over the same info. Hell, the author of TFA even put an old-time(tm) bw filter on a photo from the late 80s trying to make it seem like a shot with a laptop came from the 60s.
This should be the brief history of the personal PC modem.
There was no mention of the tons of ISDN modems used until the late 90s.
No mention of Codex or Pairgain devices. We had 64kbps, leased-line Codex modems humming along until, well, even today you'll find an odd one laying around. And T-1 Pairgains (not technically models) are still the best way to service outlying buildings on most campuses.
I understand that not every article can be complete. But you really can't talk about the history of modems without Pairgain (now ADC) and Codex.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I am not!
It's sad that only commercial modems are mentioned.
I well remember building a series of homemade modems starting in the early '80s.
There were many magazine articles for homebrew modems. Most of these derived from the FSK radio modems in widespread use by Hams at the time.
The computer was a DECsystem10. It was difficult to keep up with the blinding speed of the text scrolling past on the screen!
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
The coolest modem of all time, and not even an honorable mention!?
No MODEM using the standards indicated has worked at any speed greater than 2400 baud. (That means 2400 transitions per second).
Many MODEMs work at 4800, 9600, 14400, 56000 bps (bits per second, or pieces of digital information per second).
What the MODEMs have done is use the ability to deliver multiple bits per such transition using FSK, QFSK,QAM, etc.
MODEMs at 2400baud or less did not require flow control -- they worked at serial line speed, and did not buffer. Modems at 4800bps and higher did buffering and would do various flow-control techniques.
Original MODEMs didn't start at 150baud, they started at 75baud, but lazy authors write lazy articles.
The acoustic-coupler worked great at 300baud (TI Silent 700), miserably at 600baud, and terribly at 1200baud.
Still this technology made itself obsolete. People were tying up VOICE channels on the PSTN switches and Telcos hated it, so they created DSL to take data off the voice channels.
E
P.S. The word MODEM (as the article indicates) represents MOdulatorDEModulator. Hence it should be capitalized. This is also try of enCOderDECoder (CODEC). Slightly less related yet as correct LASER and RADAR....
In the 70's, a number of ppl still had party lines. Basically, could not use it. Those that did not have party lines had very dirty lines. My modem ran normally at ~75 baud, though it was rated at 150. The reason was simply due to the lines. If you ran at 150, the chars would get bad. And while there was a parity bit, it really did not do the job. So, you ran slower and slower speeds. Also, it was possible (in fact, probable) to have your connnection cut. This was all in Northern Ill (the largest close town was a whopping 15K ppl; McHenry, Ill). Once I moved to Ft. Collins (ft. fun), Colorado, the lines improved in the town. We ran 150 and some places could run 300 baud. Outside, of the town, it was still party lines.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A few friends and I were talking about our days on dialup when we were growing up. One friend was commenting on not noticing the download time on a 5 meg file, and how he complains when his download speeds are 500 k per second now. We had a little fun recalling our top-out speeds of 4.6 k per second, and the magical "1 meg every six minutes" rate we had all calculated growing up.
We all agreed that in a way, it is almost a shame that kids today are growing up with remarkably better technology than we had at their age (and it hasn't been that long ago that we were their age). We all sort of miss dealing with cobbled together and salvaged parts, trying to eek out any performance we could from our machines. One of the friends present recalled helping me overclock my 33 mhz machine to 36 mhz (woohooo! A 10% gain) and how excited we were.
These days, my cell phone has more computing power than the first three computers that I owned, and a much faster data transfer rate. The old technology still amuses me though.
Randimal: AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG-CG-AT-AT-CG-AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG-AT-CG-CG-AT-AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG
I just remember US Robotic modems and BBS's and when you were lucky enough to have a USR and connect to another US Robotics modem you always seemed to get a speed just above what everyone else had. (HST mode) 16.8k back in 92-93 us laughing at the poor 14.4 guys. In retrospect... kind of sad.
Its a shame that the article missed so much....
Like the times when much of the industry didn't want to license the Hetherington Patent from Hayes on the "guard time" surrounding the "+++" in the escape sequence, so Hayes ended all of their press releases with +++ATH0 (which would cause a lot of modems to hang up on the BBS systems of their day).
They also missed the interesting fact that the "56K" modem was an old idea that was rattling around Bellcore for years before 1996 and fairly common knowledge in the Bell system. [The big issue with getting there was the need to have digital trunks connecting all of the dial-in server pools with the telephone network.]
Probable never would have become a mainstream consumer device without AOL. Until AOL, you really had to be a geek to use one.
And, of course, the modem wars of 1996-1998, as the major technology companies duked it out, the vast majority of modem companies went bust, including Hayes.
The article sis complete rubbish.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Thinking about modems reminds me of my first Linux admin job. I started out as a junior admin for a dial-up ISP in my hometown (that should be read as "flunky" since there were only two of us: my supervisor and I). Managing a server and a modem bank, all fed by T1. Those were the days. While knowledge of dial-up technologies stopped serving me long ago, at least I got to cut my teeth on networking and Linux, and I have been able to capitalize on those ever since. Going to work there got me a free dial-up account, which put an end to my long reign of stealing dial-up from those I knew. Ah, those were the days. Now I have to pay someone for the ability to steal things from the internet.
Randimal: AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG-CG-AT-AT-CG-AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG-AT-CG-CG-AT-AT-CG-CG-AT-CG-AT-AT-CG
After thousands of times listening to my various modems connecting from 300bps to 56K and with the various incarnations of error correction I was eventually able to knowing how fast I was connected by sound alone. The problem was that as modems got faster and more sophisticated the connection time kept getting longer and longer. Sometimes I'd have to wait through 45 seconds or more of whistles, grinds and groans before the two modem would train. Ah, the good old days.
In the vain hope that they'll have nostalgia value someday I still have in my possession:
1) Mint condition Hayes Smartmodem 2400. The original workhorse.
2) Practical Peripherals 14.4K. long box with a one-line LCD that displays the connection speed and error correction mode
3) US Robotics 56K Courier - The last great standard.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I was trying to put together an inexpensive homebrew computer-to-transceiver audio interface for digital radio transmissions and needed a pair of audio frequency transformers. I knew that all POTS line modems had a transformer in them that would work and I thought that this would be a cheap source for parts that cost about ten bucks apiece new. Of course, I had just recently sent all my old modems to the recycler so I started asking around to see if anyone had a modem that they wanted to get rid of. Out of the more than 20 people I asked, not a single person still had one.
Hard to believe that only ten years ago the modem ruled supreme when it came to Internet access. Now you can't even find one to cannibalize.
KJ6BSO
This ain't rocket surgery.
Back in the early '90 the whole HST vs V32.bis was a big deal for a couple of years. It's a bit sad to not see this mentioned in terms of the impact to the PC modem world...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
While one might think things have improved by four orders of magnitude (10,000x), thanks to Parkinson's Law, they have only improved by two orders (100x). Navigating to the washingtonpost.com home page takes 7 seconds to load on my 2.5-year old 2GHz desktop with Firefox. CTRL-A and CTRL-C then paste into Notepad yields a 15K text file. 15 * 1024 * 10 bits / 7 seconds = 19.2K.
Hey, it's like I'm back running my 1992 BBS.
were tryting to stop people from connecting early modems or setting up BBS, despite the law.
Probably one of the major reasons for the slow early improvement in modems.
What history of modems completely skips the Telebit Trailblazer? Roughly 18 kbps in 1985 - many years before 14.4k modems became common. Expensive enough to be out of reach of most BBS'ers, though. But worth the money if you were doing UUCP over a long distance call every night.
I don't recall V.42 / MNP being popular with 2400 baud modems. The data rate was so slow that enabling error correction resulted in too much latency when "browsing" text. MNP could be done in software also, and a few comm programs offered it. They missed the whole Courier HST vs. v.32bis battle. The v.32 and v.32bis modems were way more expensive than USR's modems for a long time because implementing that standard required an echo canceling chip. This allowed full speed bidirectional transfers where USR's didn't. Most didn't care because they weren't usually doing both upload and download at the same time. That is, unless they were using Bimodem, which allowed two-way transfers. And you could chat with the SysOp during the transfer! Good times, good times...
The article would take what, an hour to receive on a 300 baud modem?
I once worked at a place that had a DEC/VAX mini with a bank of about 8 modems for VT100-compatible terminals. If there were modem complaints such as dial-in problems, I had to first figure out which modem was connected to which phone number. Others didn't always keep the map up-to-date. Plus, it used busy-roll-over.
The test phone was a ways away from the modem bank for the VAX minicomputer, so I had to keep the modem trying to connect long enough until I got there to see which modem answered the call (via LED). The only easy way I found to do this was to manually whistle an acceptable modem tone into the phone in order to trick the modem into thinking I was a modem trying to connect. This would keep it trying long enough to allow me to run from the test phone to the modem bank. It had to be the right pitch and wavering to work most of the time. I got pretty good at it after a while. I learned to "speak modem" a bit.
A computer-room technician once saw me whistling modem sounds into the phone and running back and forth. I later told him why, and he told me I was nuts and mumbled something about whistling sweat nothings to my robotic girlfriends.
Table-ized A.I.
FTA: "To grab a bit of perspective on the actual speed of these modems, consider that a letter consists of eight bits. A speed of 300 bits meant that this modem could only send out around 30 letters a second." That's about the same speed as text messaging.
This is how I remember it. Hayes modems, using the patent, required a certain amount of delay time surrounding "+++", their escape sequence, before the modem would recognize it. Thus, "+++" in the text stream wouldn't trigger it under normal circumstances because it would come and go too fast.
But the patent was a patent on the delay; and to avoid paying for the "delay" royalties, other modem companies would just use "+++" without the delay for their escape sequence, which risks modem confusion if accidentally sent as text, but otherwise wasn't that common. However, to embarrass non-patent modem companies, Hayes embedded "+++ATH0" in their digital documents. This would cause non-Hayes modems hang up if they ever transferred such documents. The trick sounds rather Microsoftian.
I remember other vendors complaining to the press, saying "you cannot patent pauses. Next they'll patent Ummm's" or something like that. (Obama would have a big bill if they did.)
Table-ized A.I.
No I really do, I love modems. I grew up with them. And calling BBSes (and running one for several years) was really great.
I don't think I would have gotten into programming (my career) if it wasn't for the BBS scene of the 1990s.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It also neglected to mention that 56k was strictly theoretical and in the real world, it was normally capped at 53k max to avoid crosstalk.
Did anyone else have one of the "shotgun" modems in the late 90's - a pair of 56k chips on a single card? You could plug it into two separate POTS lines and connect to an ISP that supported aggregation to get a genuine 106 kbsp down and 67 up. I was on Netcom at the time, which supported aggregation. You could actually have call-waiting on one line and when someone called, the card would drop back to one channel and the phone would ring. It was actually pretty slick and I ran it for a year or so until DSL was finally available in my neighborhood at a blistering 256k.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
Man, remember writing init strings? That was a skill. Every new modem you got, you sat down and figured out how it interpeted the AT codes. Then, you had to fine-tune the string. How long did your line need dialtone before you dialed? How fast could you dial the numbers (in ms)? Of all my memories of dial-up, I think some of my best are of tweaking the init string so you could dial in as fast as possible. After all, there was a good chance you'd get a busy signal; you need to hang up and redial ASAP!
Solve:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=9a9af759-f3f6-4edd-88a5-31e0d8b30d57
CNCP Telecom ( at least them .. certainly others too ) used telephone line conditioners. .Im surprised .. guess you were all skipping class that day :)
Their role was to boost the high frequencies so's you would get more bandwidth specially
in places where the telephone lines were a bit below spec or borderline or too long
noone seems to have noted their absence
Ric
In late 90s the biggest telephone operator in southern Finland was called HPY. The company had such rates that would allow you to have the first 30 minutes of a call for a fixed price. After that a per-minute rate kicked in. So it was actually a common practice for finns to stay online a bit over 29 minutes at a time, then shout something like "hpy" on BBS/IRC and reconnect. Funny.
What would have nostalgia value for me would be if you had recordings of the handshake -- that would bring back memories (not all good).
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
In the early days hobbyists had to build their own modems. I say 'Hobbyist' because that is all there was in the days of s100 and CP/M or Northstar DOS when micro computers only came in kit form. The PennyWhistle was a favorite as is was a feature article in Popular Electronics. The AppleCat was another popular hobbyist modem that was made popular with the Apple II.
I setup the original BBS system in the late 70's for Ward Christensen and Kieth Peterson called CBBS in a computer store in Royal Oak, Michigan using a Bell 103 modem.
Now get off my lawn.
Bah, kids nowdays, so spoiled with the megabit modems.
Before the Bell System modems, there were over-the-airwaves modems, going back to 1930 or so. The endpoints were teletype machines, whirring away furiously at 60WPM, 7.42 bits per character. ( 5 data bits, one start bit, 1.42 stop bits).
The modems wee made up of L/C filters and a trunkful of vacuum tubes. I used to have a military modem, a CVV -something, that was the size of a suitcase and weighed about 60 pounds. 42 BPS.
But it could do 42BPS over a noisy fading shortwave radio link, all day long, while taking direct mortar rounds, and never say "NO CARRIER."
My first modem experience was in 1979 with an Epson 110 baud acoustic modem using a rotary phone and connected to a line printer. The connection was from my high school library to the West Chester State College outside of Philadelphia. Played a lot of text games - Hunt The Wumpus, Star Trek, Adventure, etc. and learned BASIC - I printed out the code and learned how the games were made. That was 30 years ago.
You're right about most of the components in a PC, but not what determines the clock stability. The clock speed is set by a phase-locked loop using a crystal oscillator (usually quartz) as a frequency reference. Quartz crystals used in your garden-variety PC typically have a worst-case environmental stability specification of 10 to 100 ppm (0.001% to 0.01%), depending on a lot of factors, most of which are design (and cost) parameters, and most of the time the clock frequency is much closer than that: Running a "modern 3GHz CPU" over its entire specified operating temperature range (e.g., -10 to +60 C, although this will vary by manufacturer) one would expect less than 300 kHz frequency drift. (Note that this is the ambient air temperature, not the CPU temperature.)
One usually has to get down to the range of single-chip MCUs to find clock applications that can support frequency stability as poor as 0.1%. In these applications, piezoelectric ceramic resonators are common, due to their lower cost compared to crystals.
I think the Hayes Smart-Modems of the early 1990s were some of the most attractive electronics of the era. They had that aluminum case, with ever-blinking LEDs behind the black window. Hayes were top of the line for a while. A short while, unfortunately for them. I Googled and found this interesting site http://www.heatherington.net/hayes/index.html Such big hair at the time.. for men and women.
if you had recordings of the handshake -- that would bring back memories (not all good).
Why, did you have crushes on girls in BBSes?
I remember seeing the girl's username online and feeling tingles of love running up and down my spine.
And the V.8 handshake always mean I have a chance of seeing them online, and chatting with them.
Although I think I must have had an improved model as I believe the one I used was 180 baud. Used to run it connected to a secure teletype machine and printer, all of which was connected to an HF radio. We could send messages up to about 3000m depending on conditions :P :)
Actually the process was to punch up the message on a tape first, then feed the tape through the TT machine to send the message. You had to get the message header perfectly formatted or it would be refused at the other end (generating an error message which required a response with a perfectly formed header - or you got an error message response to your error message etc. Fun times were had by all). Believe it or not I miss that technology
Although not as much as I miss running a BBS. It was always massive fun to hear the modem go off, do its handshake, and then go check the PC to see who was connecting and from where etc. The web is more userfriendly overall, but it just isn't as personal as the BBS community was. I don't miss my phone bills though...
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Wow. Not only does it simply rip off the Wikipedia without crediting it, it's technically wrong throughout. Terrible article, not worthy of front page /.
Maury
AOL was once upon a time known as Quantum. If you didn't have a Commodore 64, you didn't get to play online. The average IQ at Qlink was a LOT higher then, lemme tell you.
But my USR 56kbaud modems were never able to exceed 33kbaud on my home POTS lines. The phone co, Southern Bell explained to be it had something to do with how their 'remote' CO was built. A remote CO is essentially a bunch of switches nailed to a telephone pole where there is a large cluster of endpoints more than 15 (or 18?) thousand feet from the nearest CO. In either case the remote CO, functioning like a giant glorified midspan repeater could not handle the constellation pattern of 56kbaud. Cheaped out, in other words. I suspect this had something to do with them trying to get me to buy FAKE ADSL - which, actually wasn't ADSL but instead they took 2 8bit ISDN lines, bonded them together for a single sync 128kbps channel. Of course everytime you picked up the phone, you lost half of your data bandwidth.. I never did get a good answer why they couldn't use two 7+1 channels with single sideband signaling for voice...oh well.
Well now we have cable and U-Verse and all sorts of stuff and my kids don't know what the modem handshake sound is.
I had forgotten completely about Telebit. I never got to hear its modulation, though I've heard it described as sounding like "whalesong". I just did a check on Youtube to see if something about it may have been uploaded, and it thought I misspelled "Telebid". Sheesh.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
These hacks need to spend more time doing research before churning out articles, e.g. I could swear that I can remember from when I was a kid in the late 80s and had speed envy that US Robotics(Racal Vadic?) and others had already turned out 9600bps and higher speed modems(14.4kbps). The catch was that they ONLY worked with the same brands/types of modem as they used highly proprietary mechanisms. Then in the early-mid 90s came the 28kbps then 56k modems shortly thereafter.
Those early 9.6k+ modem were expensive as I recall, something like $1000 apiece or close, of course I may be misremembering and they may have only been $500 or but either way I was a kid and it was alot of money for those beasts...
One thing I forgot to mention was that apparently (from what I heard back in the day), Telebit was popular among uucp sites. HST was big with the BBS scene because of USR's special offer to sysops (you had to have a dedicated-line BBS, and being a Fidonet node was almost an instant qualifier). V.32/V.34 took over because nobody ever sold anything compatible with Telebit, and USR insisted on making HST an extra cost feature for Courier modems only, never putting it in their consumer Sportster line.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
If your modem didn't come in an oak box, and have a telephone cord hanging out of the top, it's too new and doesn't count as part of a history of real PC modems. 134.5 baud ought to be fast enough for anyone.
The slowest modem I ever encountered run 50 baud over HF radio. It weighed maybe 15kg and was built using discrete analog components.
My first login was done at 1200/55, and my first Internet connect at 14k4...
My current ADSL manages 10M down, 1M8 up. Things have changed. A lot!
My web site ATH0.com has an old modem ad on the front page, I scanned it from an 80s magazine.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1490078&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=30560500#30562472
Something that hasn't been mentioned is how little today's college graduates will know about modems. I think this goes hand-in-hand with using analog tape recorders to store program data, this was quite common in the early 1980's and together with my 300 baud modem it really helped to demystify storage and electronic communications for me.
Go ahead and shop for a new PC with a modem in. Good luck. Everything has a network board in it now, with the exception of FAX machines the modem has quickly been relegated to attics and basements everywhere. Tape drives aren't doing much better these days, it seems direct to disk is getting to be the cheapest route.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
I was online with many BBS' with during dial-up modems days before they died because of the Internet. /. has a few old stories about this awesome documentary from years ago:
Google Video has all the parts online:
1: Baud introduces the story of the beginning of the BBS, including interviews with Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who used a snowstorm as an inspiration to change the world.
2: Sysops and Users introduces the stories of the people who used BBSes, and lets them tell their own stories of living in this new world.
3: Make it Pay covers the BBS industry that rose in the 1980's and grew to fantastic heights before disappearing almost overnight.
4: Fidonet covers the largest volunteer-run computer network in history, and the people who made it a joy and a political nightmare.
5: Artscene tells the rarely-heard history of the ANSI Art Scene that thrived in the BBS world, where art was currency and battles waged over nothing more than pure talent.
6: HPAC (Hacking Phreaking Anarchy Cracking) hears from some of the users of "underground" BBSes and their unique view of the world of information and computers.
7: Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.
8: No Carrier wishes a fond farewell to the dial-up BBS and its integration into the Internet.
There is a DVD version that can be ordered, or downloaded for free and legally (hurray for Creative Commons) with less contents.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Do you want a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 in the box?
While growing up I started reading more and more for enjoyment. As modem technology improved, my reading speed HAD to increase to keep up with the modem, due to my inability to afford a com program with a scroll back buffer, due in part to the various terminal emulations that I wanted. I got to the point where I could read, remember and ace tests with my reading speed up to 14.4. My first slow modem was a 1200, then 2400, 4800, and I skipped 9600 to go to 14.4. After that I could not keep up at a reading speed. I can skim faster then 14.4, but not read and remember. Anyone else's reading speeds influenced by their modem?
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1490078&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=30560500#30562472
I can't help but feel that we've lost something valuable.
Perhaps I'm just stating the obvious, but that thing would be (a feeling of, real or not) independence---that you could get by with your own mind, body and toolbox, without having to call upon experts whom you might feel have some power over you (the power to set a price if nothing else).
Does that resonate with you?
In high school debate, we'd train each other out of saying 'um' by shouting 'UM!' at anyone that said it during an in-class / practice debate. It tended to cascade funnily, since you say um to fill silence while collecting your thoughts, and the first thing that happens when you're flustered in front of 20 classmates is that you say 'um' about 10 times in the next minute. It tended to be a bloodbath...
Imagine that happening during a press conference. Even as an ardent progressive and an Obama supporter, that mental picture makes me smile.
Having said that, it's a tame habit as bad speechifyin' habits go. Some people don't even notice 'em. And I'd rather the president say 'um' than say 'nucular'. Or some of those Bostonian 'R' dialect words (pahk the cah in the garaRj).
See subject-line above, & see how "the user with a better password" ran from this ->
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1490078&cid=30562472
Typical - he did just like most "users with a better password" usually go and do: Run!
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"Outside of being completely amused by your rantings at others for criticizing your awful posting style" - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
Care to show us your PHD in English, you undereducated moron? It's terribly amusing WATCHING YOU RUN LIKE A SCARED BEYOTCH WHO SHOT HIS MOUTH OFF & NOW IS AFRAID TO BACK UP HIS B.S. ... or, are you showing others differently now? Not.
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"I am highly amused that you have honestly made the absolute worst mistake an IT security professional can make: believing that you have found a solution that someone can't break." - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
First of all: The use of a HOSTS file is only a SMALL PART of what's needed, but it is a HIGHLY EFFECTIVE ONE (especially in this very case) &, one that's easily obtained (see the HOSTS file section on wikipedia for example, & the mvps.org model's probably the best one listed imo @ least, because it's regularly maintained) & easily maintained as well (text editor, anyone?)...
So, once more? Care to prove me wrong??
So, grow a pair, & back up your b.s. I quote above:
Show where I am SUPPOSEDLY "wrong" here, and I will rip you up in seconds with very simple, easy, & effective work-arounds for your b.s. here (and I think you KNOW it, & this is why you outright RAN, you moronic little coward).
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"I'm glad you think you are clever, and I encourage you to keep a healthy level of confidence." - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
LOL: Who the hell are you? You're NOTHING MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER "USER WITH A BETTER PASSWORD" & that's it, "Mr. Admin", lol... so, please:
Don't even TRY to be "clever" with me, OR "look down your nose @ me" you condescending little douchebag... because I will shred you, and again:
I think you KNOW it, because you ran like a scared little child who has done wrong (I can only presume that by your running away from answering me here).
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"However, your solution isn't exactly flawless" - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
Well, once more? Tell me where it is "flawed" & I will tear up your stupid replies, literally in seconds, with very easy work-arounds (ones that are probably way, Way, WAY over your undereducated "user with a better password" dim brain's capability to come up with yourself).
I'll be waiting...
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"and rather than showing healthy confidence, you're over posting, becoming belligerent toward others, and generally being a prick." - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
You're the one calling the names FIRST, you LIMITED LITTLE DOLT (lol, "user with a better password"), & now?
NOW, I am only returning the favor, in kind, & patiently waiting to see if you actually possess a set of testicles.
After all - you running like a scared little "beyotch" now after I asked you to show me where my solution (only a partial one, it needs a LOT MORE to be safer than a HOSTS alone, but a HOSTS file is a hell of a good measure, easily maintained, & easily obtained AND THAT WORKS (on a very simple principal no less of "you can't get burned if you can't go into a fire" basically))?
Well, after all your "big talk", which I quote now?
Please... you're only proving my point for me. Keep running "big talking user with a better password o
See subject-line above, & see how "the user with a better password" ran from this ->
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1490078&cid=30562472
Typical - he did just like most "users with a better password" usually go and do: Run! Especially when they shoot their pie hole's off & can't back up their b.s. ...
----
"Outside of being completely amused by your rantings at others for criticizing your awful posting style" - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
Care to show us your PHD in English, you undereducated little dolt?
What's terribly amusing here, is WATCHING YOU RUN LIKE A SCARED BEYOTCH WHO SHOT HIS MOUTH OFF & NOW IS AFRAID TO BACK UP HIS B.S. ... or, are you showing others differently now? Not.
----
"I am highly amused that you have honestly made the absolute worst mistake an IT security professional can make: believing that you have found a solution that someone can't break." - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
First of all: The use of a HOSTS file is only a SMALL PART of what's needed, but it is a HIGHLY EFFECTIVE ONE (especially in this very case) &, one that's easily obtained (see the HOSTS file section on wikipedia for example, & the mvps.org model's probably the best one listed imo @ least, because it's regularly maintained) & easily maintained as well (text editor, anyone?)...
So, once more? Care to prove me wrong?? Why don't you "grow a pair", & back up your b.s. I quote above:
Show where I am SUPPOSEDLY "wrong" here, or, in the URL above, and I will rip you up in seconds with very simple, easy, & effective work-arounds for your b.s. here (and I think you KNOW it, & this is why you outright RAN, you moronic little coward).
----
"I'm glad you think you are clever, and I encourage you to keep a healthy level of confidence." - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
LOL: AND, who the hell are you?
Clearly, based on your lack of reply? Well - You're NOTHING MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER "USER WITH A BETTER PASSWORD" & that's it, "Mr. Admin", lol... so, please:
Don't even TRY to be "clever" with me, OR "look down your nose @ me" you condescending little douchebag... because I will shred you, and again - I think you KNOW it, because you ran like a scared little child who has done wrong (I can only presume that by your running away from answering me here).
----
"However, your solution isn't exactly flawless" - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
Well, once more?
Tell me where it is "flawed" & I will tear up your stupid replies, literally in seconds, with very easy work-arounds (ones that are probably way, Way, WAY over your undereducated "user with a better password" dim brain's capability to come up with yourself).
I'll be waiting...
----
"and rather than showing healthy confidence, you're over posting, becoming belligerent toward others, and generally being a prick." - by ihuntrocks (870257) on Saturday December 26, @10:44PM (#30560500)
You're the one calling the names FIRST, in the URL above no less as proof thereof, you LIMITED LITTLE DOLT (lol, "user with a better password"), & now?
NOW, I am only returning the favor, in kind, & patiently waiting to see if you actually possess a set of testicles.
After all - you running like a scared little "beyotch" now after I asked you to show me where my solution is supposedly "flawed", & especially in the case of the NetBIOS problem...
(Using HOSTS as a "total security solution", dummy - I never ONCE said it was that. It's only a partial one