john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (09/05/89)
In article <513@wet.UUCP>, epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) writes: > In article <984@urbana.mcd.mot.com> feldman@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Mike Feldman) writes: > >Also, can anyone recommend any of the low-priced modems, eg. Practical > >Peripherals? My father's under $100 1200 baud modem-in-a-plastic-box > >cooked itself in under 10 hours of use, and I don't want to see him or > >me sink $$$s into that level of quality again. > > We have/had 2 Practical Peripherals 2400SA modems from younger > -and-more-(penny-wise-and-pound-) foolish days. They've never > quite worked right, and multiple firmware replacements have > helped, but not cured them. I say "had" because one of them > recently failed completely, and has been sent back to the > manufacturer. As soon as we get the bucks, these turkeys are > history. Sounds like my experience wasn't unique. I have purchased a total of four Practical Peripherals over the years and two of them were out-and-out defective. One of the remaining couldn't be used in uucp service because of firmware screwyness. It would not really honor the "AT&D3" mode which calls for resetting the user parameters when the DTR line goes false. As a result, the modem would get into death-grip with the getty and shut down the line. Calls to the manufacturer were useless. They had never heard of the problem. A second one did this intermittantly. The Everex looked good until I discovered that it used dip switches rather than EEPROM on its stand alone 2400 model. No thanks! What I found to work flawlessly was the Prometheus ProModem 2400. I recommend this as a good, cheap modem. In fact it was the cheapest of the ones I looked at or tried. (Even it's history now; I have two Trailblazers. Not cheap, but ooooh so good!) -- John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
dpz@convex.com (David Paul Zimmerman) (09/05/89)
Well, that's encouraging :-( I was just about to go and buy 8 of Practical Peripherals' 2400bps MNP 5 modems for dial-in use. Perhaps they've cleaned up their act? A recent review of internal PS/2 2400bps modems in either PC Magazine or Byte was fairly complementary toward Practical Peripherals, and I was hoping that much of what they (seem to) have done right extended to their other products as well. David David Paul Zimmerman dpz@convex.com CONVEX Computer Corp convex!dpz
campbell@hpdml93.HP.COM (Gary Campbell) (09/07/89)
A couple of months ago I read about a ATI 2400 baud MNP modem for around $165 I think. Does anyone have any experience with these? (It was the internal version for a PC, I think.) -- Gary Campbell Internet: campbell%hpbsla@hplabs.HP.COM UUCP: ....!hplabs!hpbsla!campbell