sdo@celerity.UUCP (Steve Oualline) (06/14/85)
I am planning to purchase a 1200 baud modem. Three brands I am looking at are the Anchor Mark XII, Volksmodem 1200, and Password 1200. If you have any experience with any of these please send me mail.
tim@callan.UUCP (Tim Smith) (06/18/85)
> I am planning to purchase a 1200 baud modem. > Three brands I am looking at are the > Anchor Mark XII, Volksmodem 1200, and Password 1200. > > If you have any experience with any of these please send me > mail. [ I am responding here because I lost my path finding program, and you did not provide one. ( a path, not a path finding program! ) ] I have a Volksmodem 12. Before I bought it I called Anchor Automation and asked them about the Mark XII and the Volksmodem. They told that there is no real reason to choose the Mark XII. Here are the major differences: Volksmodem 12 Signalman Mark XII ---------- -- --------- ---- --- Can send break Can't send break unless you ask for one that has this bug fixed Obeys DTR ( switch setable ) Ignores DTR Not as many lights More lights $175 to $200 in Byte $229 to $250 in Byte Unless you like spending more money, or really get into lights, you can probably eliminate the Mark XII. I know one other person with a Volksmodem 12. He has not had any problems. My only problem has been with line noise. I don't know yet if it is my phone being noisy, or my modem being sensitive, or both. I will try it from some some other phones someday ( It is not too bad, since it seems to be only at my end. I will see some garbage on the screen every minute or so, but it is not sent to the other computer, so I can just ignore it. I listened once on the phone and actually heard some noise, so I am inclined to blame the phone for now. By the way, it only happens at 1200bps. I suppose this tells me something, but I don't know enough to know what! ). The connector on the back of the Volksmodem 12 was a bit of a pain. It is a 5 pin DIN connector ( I bought mine without cables ). I was not aware that there are at least two different kinds of 5 pin DIN connectors, so I bought the wrong one when I first tried to make a cable ( they are the same size, they just space the pins differently! It is real annoying... ). I don't know if you want compatability with Hayes or not. The Volksmodem 12 works OK with MacTerminal, which expects a Hayes compatible. That is, if I tell MacTerminal to dial, the number gets dialed. There is something not correct, though, because MacTerminal complains that there is no modem connected, and aborts the dialing. But the other end is connected at this point. I haven't looked into it in detail, since it works. Other commands, such as hanging up, work fine. The Volksmodem 12 is missing some features, such as multi-number memory. It has a command to repeat the last command, so lack of memory is not a pain for the common case of redialing a busy number. I think the lack of memory is easily offset by the lack of price. I don't know much about the Password, except that if you are using an Apple computer it should work, since I have heard that the Apple modem is just a Password 1200 in a different package ( I don't know if this is true. ). -- Tim Smith ihnp4!{cithep,wlbr!callan}!tim