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From: r...@SEISMO.ARPA (Rick Adams)
Newsgroups: net.micro.cpm
Subject: 2400 baud auto-dial/auto-answer modem for $399
Message-ID: <199@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 26-Jul-85 13:53:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.199
Posted: Fri Jul 26 13:53:24 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jul-85 08:02:37 EDT
Sender: n...@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 82
I have spent the last 2 weeks evaluating a US Robitics Courier 2400
modem. I have beat on it pretty severly and can't find anything wrong
with it. We are buying several. I like it well enough that I will
probably buy myself one for home use.
The modem was used for uucp traffic on seismo for 2 weeks. It was used
for both dialins and dialing out. The ONLY problem I could find with
it is that if you try and call another site at 2400 baud and it can
only sync up at 1200, the modem prints "CONNECTED 1200" and then
resets the baudrate to the host to 1200 baud. I added 5 lines of code
to the dialer in uucp and have had no problems since. I consider this
to be minor.
Anyway, on to details. The GSA cost is $399 quantity 1. If you are not
on the GSA scale (i.e. if you don't buy as a US government agency),
you can still get it at this price by mentioning you heard about this
price from The Center for Seismic Studies (i.e. where I work). The
list price on this model is $895 and the regular non-GSA price is $479
(other dealers may charge more).
The modem operates at 300/1200/2400 baud (Bell 103/Bell212A/CCITT
V22.bis) in both originate and answer mode. It will fall back to 1200
from 2400, but not from 1200 to 300 in orignate mode and correctly
autobaud in answer mode. A nice (and undocumented feature) is that the
modem will detect what baudrate the computer is sending at and use
that as the dialout speed. This means you can just list the same modem
in your L-devices file 3 times with different speeds and not change
anything else. [it's simpler than it sounds if you are confused]
In orignate mode, it will detect (with a serate message for each)
ringing, busy, dialtone, and voice (and hang up on a voice).
It uses a superset of the HAYES SMARTMODEM command set. I used the
unmodified Hayes driver for a while before changing it to also handle
the USR extensions. It also claims to be able to be used with
CrossTalk, SmartCom and PC-Talk communications software, but I was
unable to test this. (I presume it will work, as it looks like a
hayes)
It does pulse or tone dialing and if tone dialing doesn't get rid of
the dialtone, it will try pulse dialing.
The warranty is 2 years from US Robotics. The dealer will also handle
warranty repairs (by sending you a working one and sending yours off
to the factory.)
The 1200 baud performance was much, much better than our Racal-Vadic
MACS dialers. We were able to connect to sites with the USR modem that
we could not get to with the Vadic modem. There was very little noise
at 2400 baud and virtually none at 1200. I successfully connected at
2400 baud to ATT, Concord Data Systems, Vadic and USR 2400 baud
modems, so there is no interoperability problem. This also worked at
2400 baud on our ITT WATS lines which are much, much noiser than ATT
WATS (then again, they are also much cheaper, you get what you pay
for). I expected it to have problems with the noisy ITT lines, but it
worked perfectly. I wasn't able to give it the acid test of trying to
use Sprint, but then nothing works on Sprint reliably...
Physically, it's 6" x 10" x 1". It's a very nice, low profile modem.
The dealer is the major east cost distributer for US Robotics and has
many units in stock. We received ours within days of placing the
order.
The $399 price is ONLY available from the following dealer. Any other
dealer will probably charge you more.
The dealer is:
Advanced Data Products, Inc.
18974 Bonanza Way (B-3)
Gaithersburg, MD 20879
(301) 424-9490
The salesmans name is:
Don Parnell
You can probably pay for the cost of the modem in the savings in a few
months phone charges.
It sounds too good to be true, but I've got a couple in the computer
room proving they are real.
---rick
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