mark (08/03/82)
It has been suggested that some of the backbone sites of USENET get the new Vadic 2400 baud modems to transfer news. Cost appears to be nearly $2000 each, and each site probably would need at least two (1 for dialup and 1 for dialout). Of course, if you got lots of them, you could use them for dialing up from home as well. Anybody have any opinions? Is the cost too high for some backbone sites? Mark
swatt (08/05/82)
Regarding new Vadic 2400 baud modems for key network nodes: Unless I miss my bet, you'd have to get their autodialer to go with it, which costs $600, their rs232-to-831 adapter, which costs another $500 (I may have these prices reversed, but I know the combo goes for ~$1100), and then the rack and power supplies, or another $800. Total first buy-in price would be: $1900 + 2 X $2000 == $5900. We have a rack of 3467's (answer-only) but use two standalone DF03's for dialout. Perhaps the $2000 kicker for the 2nd modem would encourage someone to come up with a really elegant solution to the problem of trying to use the same port for both answer and originate. The other problem, at least for us, is that the phone bills are paid out of some larger organizational budget, which I don't see, but we sure as hell have to sweat for every capital equipment dollar we want to spend. Anybody have any experience with these? - Alan S. Watt decvax!ittvax!swatt
ber (08/06/82)
#R:cbosgd:-248800:harpo:9800008:000:241 harpo!ber Aug 5 19:20:00 1982 I spoke with Vadic. The modem will be avialable in Dec/Jan. I asked what I need to communicate between my home and my computer. They said: 2 VA4401P @ 1945 each 2 VA1604 chassis @ 250 each No mention of any other items. brian redman
dpk (08/06/82)
#R:cbosgd:-248800:brl-bmd:4500001:000:195 brl-bmd!dpk Aug 5 18:45:00 1982 We have a program called assign which allows us to use a line in a bidirectional mode. See Unix-Wizards for a better description. (yes, it has to edit /etc/ttys, sigh.) -Doug Kingston-
korn@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) (01/17/86)
I've talked with our Arrow distributer, and she said she'ld give me USRobitics
2400 baud modems for $380 if I could put together an order of 50 people.
If you are interested in being one of those folks, write me. And if I should
get more than 50 interested folks, a further discount might be arranged!
Among the nicer features of the modem are a switch that allows either
straight through cables, or those w/pins 2 & 3 switched. Pinouts and
dip switches explained on the underside of the modem too. I've had no
trouble using a friend's (he paid more, of course).
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Peter Korn korn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU {dual,dscvax,sdcsvax}!ucbvax!kornroy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (01/18/86)
[administrative note: I've added net.dcom, and directed followups there - RHS] > I've talked with our Arrow distributer, and she said she'ld give me > USRobitics 2400 baud modems for $380 if I could put together an order > of 50 people. Big deal. We buy the USR 2400 for $399, quantity 1 from Advanced Data Products in Gaithersburg, MD. I think they can now be found for about $350 by searching the back pages of BYTE, etc. For Q50, you should be able to get them for a lot less. I've seen similar units for as high as $650; if you're paying more than $400 Q1 for a V.22bis/212A auto-answer/dial modem, you're being seriously ripped off. BTW, I understand that distributors pay $199 for the USR 2400. Even at the "discount" $380 price, they make a nice profit. At the $650 I see in the catalogs, it's disgusting. -- Roy Smith <allegra!phri!roy> System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016