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Hayes is Dead
Several folks wrote in to say that Hayes
is dead.
Remember the 'Hayes AT Command Set' that somehow became
the standard? My first modem was a gigantic silver and
black Hayes. It's strange that once again, a protocol they
started has been extended, and outlived them.
Update: 01/05 06:27 by CT : several folks wrote in with this
story where the Hayes big shots
deny the comments in the above News.com story.
And don't forget....
Hayes was overpriced for _soooooo_ long..
Still, I'm surprised they weren't bought..
Then again, maybe not.
+++ ATH
We'll Miss you.
Hayes was good.
..... =)
USR was better.
3COM is the best
...at least a far back as I can remember. I bought my first modem for $120 (300 baud Networker!) and Hayes was still charging like 4 times as much for a 300 baud modem. Of course they had cool features such as being able to dial and answer. USR became the new standard (so to speak) when they came out with their kick-ass 9600bps HST modems and sold them to BBS sysops for 50% of the $995 retail price. Meanwhile everyone else was selling 2400bps modems. I loved my Courier HST. Anyone remember the Bell 202 standard, AppleCat, Cat-Fur? Talking about old modems always makes me nostalgic.
KN
Aren't we just using 2000 baud modems these days? 2000 baud is just 67% faster. You mean you get 56k bps out of a 2000 baud modem. Amazing. How they do that?
Uhh, the 'what's new' part is that they are past the phase you describe, and are moving towards liquidation.
When I was a young and very foolish sophomore in college, I had a student loan burning a hole in my pocket.
;-)
For a Christmas present I bought a brand spanking new Hayes 1200 baud modem for my girlfriend.
Being an ignorant geek at the time, I didn't realize how unromantic that was even though she was a compSci student.
That was the only time I could afford a Hayes modem. Thats probably why they went out of business.
Wherever she is, she probably sold or threw it away long ago (along with the TRS80 clone she
bought with her student loan
Sweet, but sad times. She eventually went back to her old boyfriend.
Someone should get in there and make a mirror of all of Hayes' support materials (website, ftp site, faxback system). Since Hayes is being liquidated there is no guarantee that anyone will continue on to provide the technical support files and information for the millions of Hayes units that are still out there in the world.
Heck, it might be worth mirroring their website for historical reasons.
I got a stack of external Hayes 9600s if anyone wants to buy one for nostagiac purposed...
I remember my first modem, an internal 1200baud on an ibm 286...
Ah the late nights of tradewars and food fight bring back memories
They were the king of the modem-makers, and they sort of assumed that people would not want to buy the clones, sort of like how IBM lost the PC industry.
:)
In recent years their prices became much more competative, but USR assumed their position.
I actually have a Hayes 2400. It was a free gift for buying memory or something.
Build substandard products, provide little or no support, and believe that the customer will continue to buy your products out of some sort of 'brand loyalty'.
I worked at an ISP for several years, all of our equipment worked like a charm, except our hayes rackmount modems. No matter what we tried, they would lock up, not answer, or spit garbage characters to the calling modem. Their support was useless and we never did resolve the problem. These issues continued for the entire year we were using their products. We started buying USR rackmount units as I was leaving the company. Thanks for the command set, but good riddence to the company!
> But I'm also thankful that Hayes didn't turn out > like the implied OS leader, or all our modems
> would be 9600 baud, lose connection often, and
> cost $300 a pop.
And would mysteriously mangle your data when connected with "other brands"
Umm, no wonder I never got my rebate.
The first modem I ever actually _bought_
was a hayes, 20th anniversary 56k.
I just bought the thing a few months
ago and sent in the rebate for 40 bucks.
Does this mean I will never get my rebate?
Even if I was swindled into buying it because
of the rebate by someone who knew I would never
get the rebate?
Please mail me back at mlkesl#usaf.org if you know.
When they were sueing, they were already on a downward spiral and grasping at straws; a company that has innovative and competitive products doesn't need to engage in such practices.
I'm not sorry to to see them go. Unfortunately, they'll probably still cause considerable headaches until their patents run out, existing, like so many other failed companies, as a shell with a few lawyers and an address.
If you don't keep up with technology by keeping up with price decreases (in accordance with Moore's Law), you will pay the penalty.
I'm surprised it took this long. 3com is next, at the rate they're going with their NIC pricing.
Mark
I remember being the envy of everyone with a 14.4 dual standard and massive 300 meg hard drive (I bought it for $1000 which at the time was an unbelievable deal).
It was nice living at home and being able to just drop $1000 on a hard drive for the hell of it.
Interesting that someone mentioned 3com being in serious trouble... I was under the impression that 3com owned US Robotics... which means they're bound to be dancing in the streets right now... they now stand relatively unopposed in the modem market...
I hate to see hayes go, but in all honesty, the only product of theirs I ever owned was a 56k external, which was nothing but trouble. Nevertheless, I was always proud to say I owned the Real Thing, even if the knockoffs were in some ways better.
their precious brand name is worthless, the only basis they can compete with other modem manufacturers is price, and there is no way the management will ever let them do it.
just liquidate the damned company. die!
I used the Texas Instruments Silent 700 to work from home. My employer actually let me take it home. It cost more than a nice car. It was a typewriter with acoustic modem coupler cups on the top, a thermal paper printer, 4kb of memory, and a nice keyboard.
And that AT command set with 1200 baud was a major advance over it. We all cheered Hayes because the oompany set us free. I'm sorry to see these pioneers bite the dust.
Good riddens!!! I've never recieved such poor service from any company in my life. After I bought my modem I had to send it back twice at my expense because they kept sending the wrong one. Then when I had to send it in for a v.90 upgrade it took me over 2 months to get it back! I forgot to mention that I had to make MANY long distance calls that got expensive because I was put on hold. Everytime I e-mailed them or called they either lied to me or never replied! I still have many more complaints but I won't get into them. I'm just thrilled that they are gone!!
The AppleCat! These were great, because you could generate arbitrary tones with them. Could they also do things like decode dtmf's? I don't remember...
I wouldn't be talking about how expensive Hayes was. How much does a new U$R 33.6 WinModem cost? Around $50, a normal one is even cheaper. Now my Zoltrix 33.6 modem works just as good for $20. And why does everyone who runs linux think you *need* an external modem?
I remember the Hayes modems, but did anyone ever own/use/break one of their cronographs?
:) (mostly PHB types there).. although I never found out if it had any 2000 date fixes in it...
A place I worked at a few years back had one on their DEC PDP-11/73, and it was pretty neat - had a RS232 serial interface, programming via AT commands, lithium AA batteries for backup, and a nice, large vaccum flourecent display on the front with HH:MM:SS and the day. And it was stackable, since it used the same case as their modems.
Oh, yes, both are still in use to this day, as the company received a fix for RSX to use dates beyond 1997. Nobody seemed brave enough to patch it, so they called me to ask if I would do it.
!EHJ#%JQSK#{.Q+
NO CARRIER
I was getting worried, here was a slashdot article whose responses did not contain a non-relevant anti-Microsoft message!
Thanks for not letting me down Slashdotters!
Get a grip kiddies: Moore's Law doesnt apply to anything else other than processors.
BTW, 3com isnt going to go out of business because they cant sell NICs. The profit margin on NICs is tiny anyway.
Oh yeah, I forgot, MS is going out of business too.
Those billions they make must be in Monopoly money.
Linux r00lz!
any modem that can't operate with the simple init string of ATZ isn't worth the plastic it's made of. USR requires some funky command just to get going. and i always forget what it is when a friends terminal settings get wacked.
i have a Hayes and if my terminal settings bite the dust i can just use ATZ and i know it'll work.
this is a sad day...
BBSs are not dead damnit. I still call BBSs. Quite a few in fact. And one is a 4-line system that runs on several networked Amigas, so Amigas aren't dead either :P
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by modefan:
Hayes was good.
USR was better.
Long live USR.
Someone had to do that too. =)
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
USR used to be just as pricey as Hayes. When they first came out with Sportster modems, it was a big deal because I could actually afford one. Their Courier modems were always very pricy.
I remember using Hayes silver and black modems at work years ago. 1200 up to 9600, I think. Always liked the way they looked - kinda tough sitting there on top of the crufty old rs6k 320. Heh. Nothing like old tech...think I'll go visit the Computer Garage for a shot of nostalgia.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Actually, Hayes filed chapter 11 a few months ago. This isn't news... I doubt they will really go under though. Usually when this happens, another company looking for a good deal with snatch up another after they have filed chapter 11 and have relinquished all of their debts... Happened to Cardinal (which was bought by Hayes...).
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Overpriced? Maybe. You got a good quality modem with a warranty the company wasn't afraid of standing behind. They are workhorses. I work in a bank and we have some 1200's and 2400's that are kicking around here that still work flawlessly. They were nice enough to reduce their prices to BBS', which was a cool thing. Some of my best friends sweared by them... I wish them well in their next incarnation...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
if you want info on how 56k works, and modem in general for that matter... head over to www.56k.com
k 56whitepaper.html
also check out this white paper:
http://www.nb.rockwell.com/K56flex/whitepapers/
Normal phone lines are analog: they transmit data
as a series of peaks and valleys. Your "modem" is a MOdulator/DEModulator: it modulates outgoing data from digital to analog, and demodulates incoming data from analog to digital.
Above a certain threshold (called Shannon's Limit) the signal-to-noise ratio of any medium becomes too low to reliably transfer data. The analog phone line is the limiting factor in the speed of data transmission because of the inherent noise it contributes.
Today's telephone network is increasingly digital. In particular, the portion of the phone connection between the phone company and the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is often digital. Digital lines still have noise, and are still subject to Shannon's limit, but they have less noise and a higher ceiling.
Several companies have created techniques that take advantage of the digital portion of the phone network to achieve higher speeds than were possible with a purely analog pathway. These new techniques treat the phone system as a mostly digital network that just happens to have an analog portion.
There are several consequences to the reliance on a half-digital connection. Your Internet service provider (ISP) must have digital phone lines to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). That's the easy part: if your ISP offers 56K, they've got the digital lines.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Yeah, your right... I breezed through the article and didn't really read it. Sorry...
ouch!
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
At least, they claim not to be. At least, ZDNet says so.
http://www.zdnet.com/ zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2182458,00.html
--
Yes the AT command set worked brilliantly, and it gave a standard method of communicating with the modem.
Other manufacturers agreed and implemented it in their modems, making it incredibly easy to write terminal programs and such back in the early 80's.
That's about when Hayes decided to sue everybody who was using the AT command set for copyright infringement.
In a way Hayes sort of killed themselves. Their last good product was the Hayes Smartmodem 1200.
However, check the stock-ticker box on the article. Is it just me, or is something wrong with that?
In any case, we all owe a lot to Hayes, whether or not we use modems. If not for them, I'd consider it quite likely that the Net as we know it would be vastly different, and the change wouldn't be for the better.
I remember having a hayse... for about day. Asked for an AppleCat (1200 baud with the 202 (or was it 212?) card) for the 'ol //e but got a micromodem ][e (300 baud) instead. Took it back the next day and got the right modem (the applecat of course). Doing a 2 way transfer while chatting in the text window and 1200 was pretty damn cool back them... Then all the AE sites started popping up. I ran one on a 15 meg external mountain that would never spin up. Had to remove the cover and spin the platters >by hand to get it going.... I'm sorry, what were we talking about?
This kinda sucks for Ron Howard. I know that he was the CEO of Access Beyond and somehow after either merging or being bought out by Hayes he ended up in control.
He gave a talk at a WPI entrepreneurship class a couple of years ago and was very inspirational. I would expect to see him active in the remote access business in the future.
The Courier were and remain very pricy, but they tend to be well worth it if you need a reliable modem for 7x24 service.
It was actually bound to happen. I have only seen 3 Hayes peripherals in use in my time. 2 of them are at work. Hayes was always overpriced, which definitely proved to be their downfall.
Why pay $200 for a Hayes 33.6 when you can get a USR 33.6 that's Hayes compatible for $120? (Don't knock the prices. I haven't been 33.6 shopping in over a year)
All of my non-Hayes external modems ran flawlessly, and quite cool at that. You could prepare a 7 course dinner on the external Hayes at my place of employment.
But nonetheless, adios, Hayes.
-mickey
>Didn't Hayes sue other modem manufacturers for using the +++ interrupt idea?
It wasn't so much the use of +++, as it was the use of a guard time around the interrupt characters(+++(or any other pre-defined interrupt characters) within a data stream wouldn't switch to command mode, but receipt of the interrupt characters with a second before and a second after of no activity would). This makes it unlikely that a modem will switch to command mode just because the interrupt characters happen to appear in the data stream.
Haha to the ATH post :D
I bought a Hayes Accura ISDN last year which I am still using. But the Hayes name on a sticker couldn't disguise it was exactly the same box, board and firmware as the Zyxel ISDN modem: both companies seem to OEM it from the same Far East factory.
If Hayes' big deal was superior high-end quality, then I guess I'm not surprised they came to a sticky end seeing as Zyxel were selling exactly the same product cheaper.
I recently got a 56k hayes. Albeit a tad overpriced, heck, I didn't pay for it, it sure looks cool. Like something out of 2001, or it's action packed sequel, 2010.
It has a white case, then in the front where all the blinking lights are, it has this dark, transparent-red cover, with lighter red lites under it. the thing is way more stream-lined then a USR sportster.
New poll: I would by a modem based on
( ) Performance.
( ) Looks.
( ) You poor souls.
( ) Huh?
Earn cash in your spare time! Blackmail your friends!
For those who are too young to remember, Hayes invented much of the modem's technology, pioneered the "AT" command set, and tried to make their investment back by positioning themselves as the premium brand. For many years, they were significantly more expensive than - we're talking maybe twice the price of - any other brand.
Everyone respected Hayes for their work and thought standardizing the AT command set was a great idea. All the BBS people I hung out with in the 1980s thought they made great modems. None of us actually owned one.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Didn't Hayes sue other modem manufacturers for using the +++ interrupt idea? I say good riddance. What an idiotic thing to patent.
On the other hand, this article reports that a Hayes VP says they aren't dead. Too bad.
--
Infuriate left and right
Ah, those were the days. I had a 1200bps Hayes hooked up to my "FAT Mac" back then. I don't know how "flaming" has come to mean what it does now - that is, any form of criticism. Back then a flame was an uninhibited trashing of someone, usually written entirely in capitals and full of ANSI graphics.
I go back to the days before Hayes. Hayes
didn't have anything to do with the signal
processing that makes modems work, but they
were the first to produce a successful
modem that you
could type at. In the pre-Hayes days you had
to dial the phone for the modem manually,
and manually clear the connection after you
were done. With Hayes modems, you could be
down the hall from the modem and operate it
by just typing on your terminal. The +++
sequence was just a clever hack that completed
the job, so you'd never have to physically
touch the modem to make it work.
The signal processing, on the other hand, all
came out of the US and European phone companies
in those days.
I go back to the days before Hayes. Hayes didn't have anything to do with the signal processing that makes modems work, but they were the first to produce a successful modem that you could type at. In the pre-Hayes days you had to dial the phone for the modem manually, and manually clear the connection after you were done. With Hayes modems, you could be down the hall from the modem and operate it by just typing on your terminal. The +++ sequence was just a clever hack that completed the job, so you'd never have to physically touch the modem to make it work.
The signal processing, on the other hand, all came out of the US and European phone companies in those days.
I hope this means that we never see another "Hayes is dead" article on /.
they were getting to be as bad as a horror movie villian when it came to being resurrected
--
When she told me I was average, she was just being mean.
I still have a data sheet for the Hayes DC-103 internal smart modem. It was a S-100 format card intended to be installed in an 8-bit microcomputer, a la Altair and IMSAI. It ran the standard 110 baud (not Kbps) modulation of the time, and the spiffy new 300 baud modulation as well. And it used the AT command set. Anyone who's ever seen the insane lash ups used to get computer control over switched-line MODEMs at the time knows what a "scathingly brilliant" idea the AT command set was. I note their passing with sadness.
-=Maggie Leber=-
It's sad, in a nostalgic sorta way. I remember how exciting it was learning the Hayes command set on my first modem, a blistering 1200 baud.
-- sudo.ca
I've never owned a hayes, but since my modem was compatible, I could use it with any OS. :( ATH
- Thank you hayes
I got a Hayes Accura 56k modem just before Christmas for only $10!! It was on sale and also had a mail in rebate.
ATZ
ATS7=45S11=50S0=1
I always liked Hayes. I have an internal Hayes right now on my pc. But, other modem companies did what they did, and did it better. Now Hayes is dead.
Strangely, other OS companies can do what an industry leader (who shall remain nameless), and do it better, but that company still remains.
But I'm also thankful that Hayes didn't turn out like the implied OS leader, or all our modems would be 9600 baud, lose connection often, and cost $300 a pop.
Isn't competition great (for us)?
warn "Just Another Perl User" if $anyone_cares;
They're still selling the U.S. Robotics, Inc. brand name (unlike Adaptec when they bought Trantor) so at least there's still one Isaac Asimov-derived brand name out there!
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
I remember my first Hayes modem. A 300bps S-100
plugin card. I also remember when Concord (I believe that was the name of the company) so the rights to their AT command set to Hayes. Hayes didn't invent it, but buy purchasing it they set
the standard for th AT style commands.
It's been a long ways from the 300bps to the T1's and frac T3 is use now.
I was under the impression that Hayes went under several years ago and somebody else bought the name. Anybody know?
Ah, the joys of inband signalling...
Div.pause +++ pause ATH