pete@titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) (02/13/90)
A recent ad in MacWorld for "MacProducts USA" quoted a $99 price for a 100% Hayes-compatible modem called "MagicModem". I'm skeptical, anyone know anything about this beast? -- Pete Keleher pete@titan.rice.edu
clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu (Chaz Larson) (02/13/90)
In article <PETE.90Feb12121557@titan.rice.edu> pete@titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) writes: > >A recent ad in MacWorld for "MacProducts USA" quoted a $99 price for a >100% Hayes-compatible modem called "MagicModem". I'm skeptical, anyone >know anything about this beast? I have one of these, with the nameplate "ZOOM" on it. I urge you to stay clear. Spend the extra $80 for a Practical Peripherals PP2400SA; it has MNP-5 error-correction and is much more reliable. My ZOOM has continual problems connecting if there is even someone in the metropolitan area thinking the words "line noise." <chaz> BTW, I have no connection with Practical Peripherals, except as a friend of many people who are happy with their PP2400SA's. ATI makes a similar modem at a similar price [ATI 2400etc] -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Chaz Larson - clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu "Hey, I'm no Jack Kennedy..." - Flaming Carrot ----------------------------------------------------------------------
jeff@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Jeff White) (02/13/90)
In article <PETE.90Feb12121557@titan.rice.edu> pete@titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) writes: > >A recent ad in MacWorld for "MacProducts USA" quoted a $99 price for a >100% Hayes-compatible modem called "MagicModem". I'm skeptical, anyone >know anything about this beast? Only that from the picture the ad shows of it, it looks a lot like the Zoom 2400 baud external modem, which sells for $129. The Zoom comes with a 7 yr warrantee, certainly worth the extra $30, IMHO. Jeff White University of Pennsylvania jeff@eniac.seas.upenn.edu
bmh@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu (Brian M Hoffman) (02/13/90)
In article <PETE.90Feb12121557@titan.rice.edu> pete@titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) writes: > >A recent ad in MacWorld for "MacProducts USA" quoted a $99 price for a >100% Hayes-compatible modem called "MagicModem". I'm skeptical, anyone >know anything about this beast? I've never heard of a 'MagicModem,' but the price sounds about right to me. With the coming rise of 9600 and faster, the price of 2400's are really dropping. A brand I can recommend is Practical Periphrials. PP's modems are priced right and come with a 5 year guarentee. Brian Disclaimer: I say whatever I want, so there.
james@utastro.UUCP (James McCartney) (02/15/90)
> In article <PETE.90Feb12121557@titan.rice.edu> pete@titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) writes: > > > >A recent ad in MacWorld for "MacProducts USA" quoted a $99 price for a > >100% Hayes-compatible modem called "MagicModem". I'm skeptical, anyone > >know anything about this beast? MacProducts is right down the street from here. I bought a Magic30 hard disk from them years ago. I never got support software that they promised would come with it. They are a sleazoid operation if I ever saw one. --- James McCartney
jeff@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Stearns) (02/15/90)
In article <PETE.90Feb12121557@titan.rice.edu> pete@titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) writes: > >A recent ad in MacWorld for "MacProducts USA" quoted a $99 price for a >100% Hayes-compatible modem called "MagicModem". I'm skeptical, anyone >know anything about this beast? > >-- > >Pete Keleher pete@titan.rice.edu I was skeptical. I bought one. It was delivered quickly. The speaker is cruddy, and the case isn't as robust as it could be, but it's perfectly adequate for home use. It has a couple of nifty "switches" that are all set via software; there are no hardware switches at all. It claims to be Hayes-compatible; I see no reason to doubt that. It has a trimpot to adjust for unusual line impedances. I had no need to fiddle with it. It worked flawlessly on local and short long-distance calls, transferring 1**6 characters without error. I haven't tried it on any longer-distance calls. I would buy another without hesitation. -- Jeff Stearns John Fluke Mfg. Co, Inc. (206) 356-5064 jeff@tc.fluke.COM {uw-beaver,microsoft,sun}!fluke!jeff
carlo@merlin.cvs.rochester.edu (Carlo Tiana) (02/16/90)
In article <14938@fluke.COM> jeff@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Stearns) writes: > [lots of good things about modem] >It worked flawlessly on local and short long-distance calls, >transferring 1**6 characters without error. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I would not base my purchase on this recommendation... ;-) ;-) Sorry, I could not resist! Carlo. carlo@cvs.rochester.edu
6600bike@hub.UUCP (Puneet Pasrich) (02/16/90)
I hope this is the right place to post this... I have a 2400 baud modem, but I don't _really_ know what that means. Could someone fill me in on how to convert baud to data transfer? Something like, how long will it take to receive a 1meg file, assuming no data loss, no packet problems, etc. at 2400? What's the "formula"? Thanks! ___________________________________________________________ |Puneet Pasrich | Internet: 6600bike@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu | |Karate Kid | Bitnet: 6600bike@ucsbuxa.bitnet | |'Just do it!' | |
mjkobb@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Michael J Kobb) (02/16/90)
In article <3967@hub.UUCP> 6600bike@hub.UUCP (Puneet Pasrich) writes: >I hope this is the right place to post this... >I have a 2400 baud modem, but I don't _really_ know what that means. >Could someone fill me in on how to convert baud to data transfer? >Something like, how long will it take to receive a 1meg file, assuming >no data loss, no packet problems, etc. at 2400? What's the "formula"? This question is more complicated than it seems on the surface. "baud" as I understand it, relates to the frequency with which the carrier signal of the modem is modulated. Since phone lines have a limited frequency range, there is a limit to how high you can go with baud rates (and 2400 is getting up there, I believe, especially since you have to fit two signals in; I believe that 2400 actually requires the modems to filter their own signal out to find the other modem's, but I may be confusing that with 9600). For speeds <=2400 baud, it's fairly safe to assume ~1bit/baud, so a 2400 baud modem does ~2400bps on a really good day. Using ZTerm, I usually get a K every 4 seconds or so, and ZTerm is claiming 96% efficiency, so that means that, roughly speaking, it would take about 4096 seconds, or ~68 minutes to download a megabyte. It is possible to increase the bps on a given baud rate, for example, using compression algorithms like MNP5 (yay, Paul!), which can give an effective throughput of 4800bps on a 2400 baud signal. You can also do weird things with the encoding of the data streams to get 9600 and 19200 bps rates out of a normal phone line, and I understand that MNP6(?) is now able to push nearly 38400bps on a normal phone line (I want two of these, and X for my Mac, and I'll be a happy person!) I hope that this helps, and I entreat the more knowledeable out there to correct me (here, please) if I've screwed up somewhere... --Mike
magik@chinet.chi.il.us (Ben Liberman) (02/17/90)
In article <3967@hub.UUCP> 6600bike@hub.UUCP (Puneet Pasrich) writes: >Could someone fill me in on how to convert baud to data transfer? >Something like, how long will it take to receive a 1meg file, assuming >no data loss, no packet problems, etc. at 2400? What's the "formula"? Baud = bits/second. Usually (8 bits/char., no parity bit, 1 stop bit, 1 start bit) there are 10 bits in every character sent, so 2400 baud = 240 characters per second 1 megabyte = 1,048,576 bytes = 4,369 seconds at 2400 baud = 72 min. 50 sec. -- ------------ ------------ ---------------------- Ben Liberman USENET magik@chinet.chi.il.us GEnie,Delphi MAGIK
jmunkki@kampi.hut.fi (Juri Munkki) (02/18/90)
In his article magik@chinet.chi.il.us (Ben Liberman) writes: >In article <3967@hub.UUCP> 6600bike@hub.UUCP (Puneet Pasrich) writes: >>Could someone fill me in on how to convert baud to data transfer? >>Something like, how long will it take to receive a 1meg file, assuming >>no data loss, no packet problems, etc. at 2400? What's the "formula"? > >Baud = bits/second. Usually (8 bits/char., no parity bit, 1 stop bit, 1 start >bit) there are 10 bits in every character sent, so > > 2400 baud = 240 characters per second > > 1 megabyte = 1,048,576 bytes = 4,369 seconds at 2400 baud = 72 min. 50 sec. Actually bauds measure the modulation rate and can be totally different from the bits per second (bps) data transfer rate. Older modems usually transfer one bit at a time so it's quite common to say that baud=bps. Faster modems transfer multiple bits at a time so the baud rate doesn't say much about the actual transfer rate. Then you have to take into account even newer modems that pack data and correct errors. For binary data the transfer rate can be quite different than what you get with just 7 bit ASCII. The third thing that you have to account for is the speed of the protocol that you are using. Plain kermit or xmodem waste a lot of time because the data length/packet length ratio is quite low. I recommend using ZMODEM where you can get about 90% efficiency on an error-correcting modem. Basically what I'm saying is that even if someone says that a modem is 9600 baud, that person doesn't really mean baud, but bps unless the modem uses a very special phone line that can carry that much bandwidth. You can then merrily divide this rate by 10 to get an approximation of how fast characters might be transfered. For actual file transfers, you need to account for packet overhead. It's quite safe to add 10%, since most protocols aren't all that optimal anyway. If you are using an old kermit implementation and tranfering a binary file, expect to double the time. The above is of course nit-picking and probably doesn't interest you if you aren't already interested in splitting hairs. :-) _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._ | Juri Munkki jmunkki@hut.fi jmunkki@fingate.bitnet I Want Ne | | Helsinki University of Technology Computing Centre My Own XT | ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
george@swbatl.UUCP (6544) (02/18/90)
In article <1990Feb17.130612.1828@chinet.chi.il.us> magik@chinet.chi.il.us (Ben Liberman) writes: >Baud = bits/second. Just to clear up a common misconception: BAUD IS NOT ALWAYS THE SAME AS BITS PER SECOND! The following is paraphrased from the IEEE Standard Dictionary of Electrical and Electronic Terms: "The term ''baud'' defines the signaling speed, that is, keying rate of the modem. The signaling speed in baud is equal to the reciprocal of the shortest element duration in seconds to be transmitted....The bit rate and baud are not synonomous and shall not be interchanged in usage. Preferred usage is bit rate, with baud used only when the details of a communication modem or channel are specified." For example: My modem is 2400 bps (bits per second), but its signaling rate is 1200 baud. How can this be? Two bits of information are encoded into each signaling element. -- / George D. Nincehelser \ uunet!swbatl!george \ / / Southwestern Bell Telephone \ Phone: (314) 235-6544 \ / / / Advanced Technology Laboratory \ Fax: (314) 235-5797 \ / / / /\ 1010 Pine, St. Louis, MO 63101 \ de asini umbra disceptare \
rcfische@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Raymond C. Fischer) (02/18/90)
In article <3967@hub.UUCP> 6600bike@hub.UUCP (Puneet Pasrich) writes: >I hope this is the right place to post this... >I have a 2400 baud modem, but I don't _really_ know what that means. >Could someone fill me in on how to convert baud to data transfer? >Something like, how long will it take to receive a 1meg file, assuming >no data loss, no packet problems, etc. at 2400? What's the "formula"? Despite postings that indicate otherwise, baud is NOT synonymous with bits-per-second. But since the two are often confused, you usually can assume bps when reading baud. Baud indicates the number of signal changes per second. With the old 110 bps modems, a high pitched tone indicated a 1 bit and a low pitched tone indicated a zero bit. (this is called FSK for frequency shift keying). Thus, 110 baud = 110 bps = 10 characters per second (since each character is sent as 11 bits). New modems are fancier. Using a combination of PSK (phase shift keying) and ASK (amplitude shift keying) a 2400 bps modem manages to encode 4 bits into each signal change. Thus, with a signalling rate of 600 baud, the modem is able to send 2400 bps. 1200 bps modems also work at 600 baud, but are not as clever about encoding bits, using only PSK to encode 2 bits per baud. Usually characters are sent at 10 bits/character (1 start, 8 data, 1 stop) and so at 2400 bps you transfer 240 characters per second. Doing some rounding, this means about 1K bytes in 4 seconds, or about 7 minutes to transfer 100k bytes, or roughly 6 seconds to fill a 24x80 screen full of text. Answer your question? Ray Fischer rcfische@polyslo.calpoly.edu
bond@aerospace.aero.org (Walt Bond) (08/19/90)
In article <STUCKI.90Aug16133549@neuron.cis.ohio-state.edu> stucki@neuron.cis.ohio-state.edu (David J Stucki) writes: >Does anyone have good or bad or otherwise recommendations for Zoom >Technologies' 2400 baud modem (with sendfax)? > >thanks in advance... > >dave... Recently had my "Maxon 2400" go belly up, and they want $55 to fix it. Damn thing only had a 90-day warranty, and now I know why. Anyone want to buy it for, say, $35? It still works if you let it warm up for a while, sometimes. I see that for $69 I can get what appears to be an OEM version of the Zoom 2400 from 800-MAC-STUF. 2yr warranty. This sounds like the ticket, but wait... The Zoom 2400 sendfax modem is only $119 from several sources. I decide to try one from Software-That-Fits since they have free tech support and a 30-day return policy. 7yr warranty. 800-972-3018. It shows up in a couple days, works just fine as a Hayes-compatible data modem (am using it right now) with Versaterm. But there are problems... Software with the modem is "Quicklink II Fax" version 1.0.2, created 20 April 1990. This is a basic comm program with TTY, VT100/102/52 emulation and X/Ymodem and Kermit/"SuperKermit" (whatever SuperKermit is, and they don't say) file xfer. Has a scrollback buffer. This same program is supposed to send faxes, but they must be either simple text, Pict, MacPaint, or TIFF files. Not a bad effort considering the price, but the VT102 emulator has problems. For example, when talking to a VAX/VMS host running EDT, deleting a line in the buffer didn't scroll the text up to fill the gap as it should. I hit real problems when trying the FAX feature. This from a MacIIcx. Either the machine would lock up with no message, or Quicklink would complain that it can't find the modem. After some fiddling I give up and call Zoom's 800-number, but they refer me to their tech support line (not toll-free). So we try Software That Fits tech support. They just happened to be trying to get a Zoom sendfax to work and had been having problems also. But... next day they said they had gotten it to work per the instructions and that another customer who had been having problems managed to send a fax also. He said Zoom said that this was sensitive to the serial cable pinout and gave me the "correct" pinout. I check my cable and sure enough, it isn't exactly as he said it should be, even though it has worked fine with a data modem (and with the Zoom). At this point I'm undecided whether to bother getting a new cable or not. Even if it does work, the Quicklink II software isn't very wonderful - hanging the machine is not nice, no matter what sort of cable might be there. You can't simply take a MacWrite file and fax it either. Anyone else tried this puppy? The next-most-interesting modem is a new one from Global Village (see P144 of 7 August 1990 MacWeek), 800-736-4821. $150 gets you a "Teleport" modem that plugs into the ADB, and uses the ADB for both power and data transfer, without affecting keyboard or mouse response, they say. Includes a sendfax option that may be $60 or free, depending on whether or not they decide to extend a special offer. The fax software isn't available yet, but the modems are. 5-yr warranty, 30-day return option. Modem is Hayes compatible and has MNP-5. Person I talked to there sounded knowledgable, but has been nearly a week and I haven't gotten the printed info I requested yet. A CDEV will remap one of the normal serial ports into this modem. Or if you have COMM- toolbox running, this is another available serial device. (posted for a friend, but you can reply here. we have no affiliation with any of the above except as potential or real customers of uncertain satisfaction.)
ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) (08/20/90)
$150 for 2400 bps (not baud, dammit!) + $60 for the ability to send a fax is $210. This doesn't strike me as a good deal. Prometheus has a 2400 bps (not baud, dammit!) + send FAX modem that I've seen in stores for $230, and it comes with good software (Backfax and Macknowledge), and Prometheus is a well known company in the modem world. I sold mine, but not because of any flaws in the product. Rather, I decided that I wanted something that would receive also. For $280 mail order, there is the DoveFAX Desktop, which can also receive FAX. Also, the DoveFAX can operate in the background, and the FAX is 9600 bps, unlike many of the send only FAX modems, which are 4800. I've had one for a few days, and it seems to work fine. Tim Smith
bond@aerospace.aero.org (Walt Bond) (08/21/90)
In article <33015@cup.portal.com> ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) writes: >$150 for 2400 bps (not baud, dammit!) + $60 for the ability to send >a fax is $210. This doesn't strike me as a good deal. As you stated it, perhaps not. However, there is added value in the smaller footprint, no external power cube to mess with, built-in MNP Level 5, and possibly included free sendfax software (if their intro offer is extended) that looks like a chooser-selectable printer (and is thus compatible with most any Mac software, unlike Zoom/Quicklink). BTW, the problem with the Zoom/Quicklink on MacIIcx did turn out to be the cable. Thing will send faxes, but the user interface and compatibility with Mac applications (can only send plain text (ASCII), TIFF, or PICT files) leave much to be desired.