topher@cyb-eng.UUCP (Topher Eliot) (05/19/84)
A friend of mine has just informed me that he fixed the bad problem he was
having with noise on his (home) phone line when trying to use a modem by
requesting that the phone company remove his "call waiting" feature.
(The noise occurred all the time, not just when he was getting a second
phone call).
Apparently when he made the request the service person chuckled and said
"oh, so you're trying to use a modem, eh?"
Cheers,
Topher Eliot
Cyb Systems, Austin, TX
{seismo, allegra, ihnp4}!ut-sally!cyb-eng!topherSy.SLogin%cu20b@sri-unix.UUCP (05/22/84)
From: Thomas De Bellis <Sy.SLogin@cu20b> I'm surprised to hear that call waiting caused problems even when he WASN'T getting a call. I've been dialing up computers for quite a long time now and when I found out about call waiting in '78, I jumped on it. It was a Godsend. Previously, we had had to have two phone lines so other people could receive calls. The call waiting did everything that I wanted; the carrier light would flick on my terminal and I would know that a call was coming in. The computer would drop my line and disconnect my job; I would just pick up the phone and be switched to the caller. When I was done, I would reconnect to my job. I used call waiting in Worcester, Massachusetts for 2 years with a 300 baud US Robotics modem with no problem. In New York City, I have used call waiting for the past 4 years both with the US Robitics modem and a UDS 212 1200 baud only modem. I can't ever remember having any problem with garbage except when I got an incoming phone call. The call waiting signal is a clicky kind of a beep and other than that, it hasn't done anything else to my line. I have rarely noticed any kind of hissing or crosstalk when I was speaking with someone. This jives with my modem experience. Particularly with 300 baud modems, if your line sounds clean and quiet, you'll probably also get good modem performance. Lines that are "noisy" will tend to give you bad performance. I wonder what removing the feature did? Perhaps they gave him a new line which had cleaner response. He might try putting call waiting back on and see what happens. Tom De Bellis Columbia University -------