henry (05/18/82)
I must disagree with Peter Gross on some of his comments about the
Vadic 3451PA vs the Hayes Smartmodem. The documentation definitely
is better, but "features out the wazoo" is not necessarily an asset.
In particular, note that some of the "features" of the Hayes modem
result in its data path not being fully transparent -- it is possible
to kick it back into command mode with the phone off-hook, something
that can't happen with the Vadic. The sequence that does this is
improbable, since it involves not only a specific character sequence
("+++") but also pauses before and after, but "improbable" is not
"impossible". I much prefer hardware that can't drop a user into
autodialer command mode, accidentally *or* deliberately.
There is also some body of opinion (to which I belong on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and alternate Bastille Days) which says that 300 baud is
obsolete, period, and the Hayes is therefore about as interesting
as a great bargain on Baudot teletypes.
As to how to fit the modem into uucp, Peter may be right that it's
better to modify conn.c, but it sure is simpler to modify L.sys (unless
your L.sys is enormous -- yes, I realize that it *is* enormous at a
number of sites). I greatly doubt that our modem would have been up
and working a few hours after it arrived if I'd decided to hack up
conn.c to run it.
P.S.: If one's users are even half sane, and one told them that they
could dial in at 1200 baud only if $500 extra could be found for the
fast modem, I'll bet one could get it just by passing the hat.