300 baud C64
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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300 baud home made.
Hayes 1200. Anyone know why these things were built to be bombproof? Always kinda wondered about that...
C64 VICModem. 300 baud, manual dial. :)
That was my first one as well.
My first PC modem was the US Robotics Sportster 14400 FAX Modem. A cool feature was that you could flip a couple of bits and it would do 19200. USR reportedly grumbled about that breaking the warranty and using it against its design limits, but it worked great.
300baud from work. Fun times logging in with it. Eventually moved to 2400baud.
Supra 2400, to LineLink 144E, to Practical Peripherals 28.8 (all of these external). Being a kid I was limited to upgrading when birthday and holiday money was saved up.
To one way broadband with this weird box containing a 56kbps modem you plugged a phone cord into for the uplink and a 1.5mbps downlink over cable coax. Bi directional broadband wasnt available yet.
I don't know the model, but my first modem was 2400 baud
Downloading anything took forever but it was still a magical experience to me!
I couldn't figure out how to silence the modem sounds either (if it was even possible) so every time I wanted to use the computer when someone in the house was sleeping I had to pray the connection sounds wouldn't wake anyone up!
ATL0 or ATM0 should have silenced it. Unfortunately I had to use the Internet to look that up. :)
saving this for when time travel is invented so I can go back and tell my younger self, my mother would appreciate it!
My brother had an acoustic coupled 300 baud modem for his C64, but that stuff was off limits to me. My first was a 2400 baud on ISA card, I bought for the family IBM XT Clone when I was maybe 13, I came up with the money with a hustle. I bought an old lionel train set at a garage sale with $20, sold it to a train shop for $100 (they probably screwed me over). It was my first pc component install, I remember setting the dip switches for the IRQ channel.
My first modem was a Dataphone s21 (German Akustikkoppler) for the Commodore C64. It gave me breath-taking 300 baud on the data highway (aka boards).
2400 on a 386SX IIRC, I was late to the game. I started connecting when I moved to Coherent OS from DOS. I used kermit to dial into work. Work would then call back so I would avoid any charges:)
They had USENET on a SUNOS plus I could download source for items I wanted.
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A thoroughly obsolete 1200bps Racal-Vadic thing that didn't do the Hayes command set. Its command set was sufficiently different to AT that I couldn't configure my terminal program to control it, so I'd pick up the phone, dial whichever BBS I wanted to call, wait for the beep, push the connect button on the modem's front panel, and put down the phone.
I think it was sufficiently obsolete that the BBSes I called would have had 9600bps or 14.4kbps modems by then.
Found the manual! https://usermanual.wiki/m/e841e449995c65b1eb3d261c6cec7d97d5b42039de6114e9fed37628782b868a.pdf
First one that I had myself was a 300 baud acoustic modem. It came in a wooden box that was about the size of a shoe box but more square.
Acoustic-coupling modem for a TI 99/4a. 300 baud?
Commodore 300 baud
Mine was a 300/1200 baud modem which if memory serves correctly ran mostly @ 300.
Apple Geoport Telecom Adapter: 9600 baud.
I’m reading up on it now to confirm actual details match my memory, and seeing that it was software upgradable up to 33.6 kbps. I don’t think we ever actually did that, seeing as how our Macintosh Centris 660AV was never upgraded past the System 7.1 it came with.
Atari SX212 modem. 1200 bps.
It was a Radio Shack 300 baud modem. A little googling seems to indicate is would likely have been a Tandy DCM-3 “Direct Connect” (as opposed to acoustic coupler) modem.
It was in-line between the wall and a phone so you would pick up the phone, dial the number, head the modem tone, press a red button on the top of the modem and hang up the phone.
Unsure, some sort of 14.4kbps PCI modem that was very outdated when I started using it in my youth. We had broadband, but it was only for one machine and I was only allowed to use some random free ISP (NetZero maybe?) to keep my time on the internet limited or something.
Commodore 1670 at 1200 baud. Good times were had.
1200 baud at the time 9600 was the norm. Dad didn't know that they would autonegotiate, and had a 1200 baud modem at work, so...
28.8k, can't remember the brand. 33.6 later on, and then finally a 56k, such a big upgrade!
Then I got 4/7/20/1000 broadband.
A 14.4k from Hayes. It's what came with my IBM Aptiva. They barely mentioned modem functionality, it was to be used to send and receive faxes.
First was a Novation CAT 110/300 baud with acoustic coupler. Later I got a Practical Peripherals 1200, then a Zoom Telephonics 2400/9600. Then I bought a US Robotics Courier HST, it cost a ridiculous amount at the time. A few years later was working and I mailed it and an actual check to USR and they swapped it for a Courier vEverything (with the 20Mhz DSP). I still have that modem and a newer vEverything I salvaged.
+++ATH0
OK
*NO CARRIER*
Apple Personal Modem 300/1200 on my Apple IIgs.
Don't remember any other details about the modem other than the speed (56k). Also, that it was significantly cheaper to dial-up during the night. I guess that could be the reason why I grew up as a night owl. 😅
300 baud, I wish I could remember what brand it was. I think I had it hooked up to my Apple ][+ and dialed in to College.
14.4k. Then 28.8k. Then 56k. Then T1 from my local computer group, and finally cable... fiber is coming this year.
I'm going to serve 2600.network over fiber. Somehow I wound up at the beginning.
I had the VicModem, but don’t recall how fast it was. It was often take. From me as a form of punishment. I’d say it was in the locked drawer more often than connected to the computer.
I think it was 300 baud. I couldn't afford it, so followed the schematics to figure out how to connect a military surplus acoustic coupler modem at 110 baud. I didn't know any better, so I thought it was fantastic. Still, a few months later I got a good job and upgraded to an Apple//c clone and a 1200 baud modem.
I remember when I went from 2400 to 14.4 and I felt like the world was my oyster.
My first modem was 110 baud acoustic coupler modem that I got from military surplus. I couldn't afford the modem Commodore sold for the VIC-20, so I figured out how to wire this thing in.
I didn't really do all that much with it, because not too much later I got a better job so upgraded to a Laser whatever clone of the Apple//c and a 1200 baud modem.
I don't really remember before broadband. I just have to read about the concept and buy slower, louder internet whenever I have the money. Haha.
(Actually, I think coding my own could be a pretty neat project)
"Zoltrix" 14.4k internal here!
Around 1991 I spent $300 of money saved to buy a 14.4 modem. I can’t remember the brand. But of course the speed upgrades kept coming and I kept buying until DSL arrived. What a fun time those early years were.
I wish I could remember but I know we were quite late adopters so it would have been reasonably fast. My family first got a modem because my brother was stuck at home with a long term illness so he was tutored remotely over telnet for a while.
My first was 28.8 Hayes but was limited to 9800 cause of Telxon audiocopler. I also had a USR PCMCIA card that was 56k(? My memory is slipping cause of long covid) and somehow that was able to connect faster through Telxon audiocopler.
- I remember when we upgraded to 14400 it felt like light speed.
My first own modem was a US Robotics Sportster Winmodem 28.8Kbps. It did have fax capabilities. But the first modem I used I think it was a Accura modem.
The TelePort Gold II came in at a speedy 14.4 Kbps. It came with my Macintosh Performa.
It was the U.S. Robotics 56k PCI Winmodem that Dell was selling with their "Dimension XPS" Pentium II desktops. I later bought a proper 56k PCI modem off of a high school classmate so that I could download Debian packages without having to reboot into Windows first.
Those software-defined modems were actually kind of neat. They could process arbitrary signals—not just data and fax, but also voice—so, with the appropriate software, you could use one as a voicemail or PBX, or call people with it and talk to them using the speakers and microphone connected to your computer.
“Winmodem” is a bit of a misnomer, as there's nothing Windows-specific about the hardware. It's just a sound card, except the signal goes to a phone jack instead of a common 3.5mm audio jack. Using it like a sound card requires only a simple sound device driver.
The problem that gave them the “Winmodem” name, rather, was that to use one of these as a modem, you needed not only the sound device driver (which is easy) but also a software implementation of a modem signalling protocol like V.92 (which is hard), and that only existed for Windows. I think someone did eventually write such an implementation for Linux, but not before dial-up modems had already become obsolete.
Nowadays, the entire telephone network that Winmodems connect to is increasingly obsolete, so Winmodems have lost their remaining niche application and are little more than a historical footnote.
1989: Radio Shack Direct-Connect Modem DCM-6 (300 baud, no autodial)
I don't know the model, but it was at&t, and it had its own ip that fucked my ip forwarding for years. So annoying.
I think we upgraded our plan once and it was 7mbs/s for 30 dollars by the time we cancelled. We got with another company for literally 3 times the speed for 15 dollars more a month.
Its speed was 2400 bits per second. No idea what model. Some ISA internal modem. Managed to run up a $60 phone bill for my parents by calling a BBS on the other side of the country. It took a while for my allowance to clear that debt.
Nothing very exotic: USRobotics 14.4
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