casey@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (02/14/89)
I haven't followed the modem news for a bit. I need to buy five new modems. Do people have any recommendations for 2400 baud or higher modems capable of dial in service? Note that dial in capability is very important. Most modems don't handle it properly. Modem manufacturers seem to feel that their modems are only going to be used in dial out applications. I think they must think that the other end is a tin can on the end of a string for all the support they offer for dial in. They don't seem to understand what's necessary for proper support of dial in service. For instance, the Hayes standard doesn't encode any reasonable way to turn off interpretation of the command escape which can cause havoc in a dial in. If you know of any good/cheap modems which support V.32 or other high speed modes in addition to 1200/2400 (300 not important), I'd like to hear about them also. Trailblazers are too expensive to buy 5 modems, but I've seen a couple of blurbs go by about V.32 modems for ~ $500 which would be acceptable if they're good modems ... Specs: 110/300 baud support: Not important. May be omitted. 1200/2400 baud support: Important. Must be present. high speed protocols (both proprietary and non): Nice. Willing to spend a couple hundred dollars more or so for this. More willing if includes error correction with standard protocols at all levels. Price range: 1200/2400 only: no more then $200 1200/2400 with high speed modes: V.32 preferably less than $500 V.32/w MNP error correction preferably less than $600 Please email responses to me (casey@lll-crg.llnl.gov) and I'll summarize to the group. Data for high speed modems will be used by another group buying a few dozen modems in about a month. Casey
casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (02/22/89)
| From: Daniel Ho <dho@ORION.CF.UCI.EDU> | | > With regard to your recommendation of the MultiTech MultiModem | > MT-224EH, do you know if it will work properly in a dial in application? | > Specifically I'd like to be able to disable "+++" escape permanently. | > It's pure death in a dial in application. | | Absolutely. You can set a dip-switch so that the modem will ignore | AT commands completely. But I don't want to turn off the AT commands. All I want to do is disable the "+++" escape. The "+++" escape is only useful for interactive dial out use. For everything else it's totally useless. When I use my modems for dial out applications they're under the control of a program which can lower and raise DTR to get the modem's attention. Since almost no one talks to a modem directly, preferring instead to use one terminal emulation package or another, the "+++" is one of the least used features of a Hayes compatible modem. It's certainly not justified to make it impossible to turn off. I would guess that 99% of all modem applications don't want it in fact. But it's rare that I've seen a modem manufacturer who understands this. It's like the continual brain damage we're forced to live with with regard to CAPS locks. Nearly totally useless keys, but available on all terminals placed in a high finger target area where they're most likely to be accidentally and inconveniently typed. Put the idiot key way off to the side where I'm not going to hit it accidentally. It's low usage doesn't justify its current highly prominent position. The same goes for the "+++" in band escape. Give me the capability to get the idiot feature out of my way. This is not a flame at you, it's just an old gripe that I get totally fumed about every time I have to deal with modem manufacturers who seem to think that the only use for a modem is dial out interactive. Again I have to ask: what do they think is on the other end of the line? A tin can on a string?? I don't think I'm asking for too much. The Start Team 1200 had a dip switch to do this. Putting S2 (I believe that's the proper register for the escape character) in non-volatile memory and giving me semantics like escape-char > 127 implies that escape is non-functional. Casey