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Are dial-up modems useful for anything?

I've lost track of it but someplace I have a 56k modem that connects via USB, not really vintage but I've never seen another like that. Somewhere is also a 1200 external modem I believe is still new in box. I can't recall who made it though.
 
You could actually convert most any external modem to USB using one of these.

I was thinking of inviting the local vintage club to bring in their modems, systems, and BBSs of old at the next monthly meeting. I think it would be cool to have a bunch of old systems connected in a room with analog modems - some as clients and some hosts. Just to immerse in the nostalgia for a while. Though I might have to police the 1337 sysops who think their C64 board is too cool for the Apple or Atari users. :)

I remember my room mate back in the day owning a 300 baud modem he had to freeze to get working. It would work for about an hour pre-frozen and turned up side down so condensation wouldn't short anything. Then he would have to refreeze it for the next board.
 
I've always had this in the back of my mind, but with a modem can one "null modem" a modem cable and copy a file? Could this be a missing but universal trick folks could use for file transfers just like serial? I know there would have to be a common file transfer protocol but it seems like we should be able to connect two systems, echo ata or open them via basic, etc then start transferring a file or data and write it to another location like memory or a file.
 
Ole Juul said:
Certainly the advantage of an internal is that it has it's own UART and doesn't need a matched cable or external power supply. They are indeed easier to set up from that point of view. However, an external modem has no concerns beyond those problems. You can use any old or modern modem with your 5150 if you have a serial port on it.
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The main reason I prefer internal modems, aside from not having cables and another PS cluttering up the place, is that you can usually set them to COM3/IRQ5 and leave COM1 and COM2 free for other uses.
 
Vlad said:
I've lost track of it but someplace I have a 56k modem that connects via USB, not really vintage but I've never seen another like that. Somewhere is also a 1200 external modem I believe is still new in box. I can't recall who made it though.
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One of my systems has a 56K USB modem: neat, just a fat dongle with a phone jack on one end and a 3" USB cable on the other; works great.
 
If you had a modem with caller ID, you could build a phone ban list.

Monitor the caller id, and use it to answer, and hang up right away on undesirables.
 
bluethunder said:
If you had a modem with caller ID, you could build a phone ban list.

Monitor the caller id, and use it to answer, and hang up right away on undesirables.
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I don't think that works any more. There is too much fiddeling with the id. Telemarketers use the same as people who use phone cards and other odd services - not to mention those stupid cell phones that people are playing with these days. I watch the id carefully and it's gotten to be a mess. If I was to filter telemarketers then I'd cut off half the calls I want too.
 
MikeS said:
One of my systems has a 56K USB modem: neat, just a fat dongle with a phone jack on one end and a 3" USB cable on the other; works great.
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Interesting. I don't think I've seen one that's just a dongle but then again I don't really look at such things since broadband came about. Mine is a box that's ironically a bit larger than the old USR ones. I believe it was a something Tornado. I still have a 28.8 and a 36.6 USR Sportster hiding in the same black hole that has all of the other important stuff I can't ever seem to find.
 
Philosophical question here...

Is a 56K modem nowadays even useful? You're probably going to be using a modem if you live out in the boondocks, pretty far away from the CO anyway. So 33.6K is probably as good as you're going to be able to do in any case. All that wonderful V.90 capability is wasted.
 
Yes, I use one on a daily basis. I consider it retro computing communication in it's purist form. Generally 46k here.
 
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At the moment one of mine is connected at 44kbps and the other (the dongle) at 48kbps, which is what they normally connect at; sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower, but I've never seen 56k. Mind you, I've never seriously 'tuned' them.

Not much different 'in the boonies' at the cottage, although it can be bad every once in a while.

Good enough for most stuff including streaming audio, although you have to be patient for videos and those 35MB files are best downloaded after I've gone to bed or gone out for a while ;-)
 
I'm about 12 wire miles from the CO and never got anything better than 33.6K. And this is with a range of 56K modems, from cheap to very expensive. I even had the line equalization checked with no resulting improvement.

Curiously, if you've got long wires, this article says that you could benefit from switching to V.34 from V.90.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Philosophical question here...

Is a 56K modem nowadays even useful? You're probably going to be using a modem if you live out in the boondocks, pretty far away from the CO anyway. So 33.6K is probably as good as you're going to be able to do in any case. All that wonderful V.90 capability is wasted.
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I live in the boondocks and the cable here is decades past its end of life date. It's a 12 mile run to town and when I was using dialup 5 years ago, I was getting 42-48K throughput. IOW, as good as it gets on any line. So yes, a 56K modem is still useful.
 
bluethunder said:
If you had a modem with caller ID, you could build a phone ban list.

Monitor the caller id, and use it to answer, and hang up right away on undesirables.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's how my program works, it hangs up after half a second. Though I've been thinking about letting the program keep the modem off-hook just to tie up one of their lines for as long as possible (at least 2 minutes if they don't try to use the line again, more if they do, in a large and busy call center with automated dialing probably all day long). You can probably tell that I really despise telemarketing. :)

The disadvantage is of course that my line is also tied up, lol :D

Speaking of disadvantages, the Caller ID system used in the US and Canada has a "design flaw" in the sense that it sends the Caller ID info between the first and second ring which means that it's not possible to block calls silently (one ring will always get through).
 
Reading through this thread makes me what to pull out a modem and try to get it to connect to an ISP just for old times sake, but then I remember that I don't actually have a phone line in my apartment. Well I mean there probably is a one somewhere in the place, but it is not hooked up to a service of any kind.

My primary line is my cell phone, and has been since 2000.
 
mikerm said:
Wonderful FCC 56k limit:
http://www.56k.com/cons/53k.shtml

Nothing like the government crippling the use your own hardware!
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From the page you linked to:

"The FCC does not limit modem speeds per se. Instead, it limits the amount of power that can be sent through the phone line in order to prevent interference with other electrical devices."​


Limiting the power used to transmit to prevent interference with other devices seems perfectly reasonable. How is that "crippling" and isn't it a function of government to regulate to prevent unwanted interference with preexisting devices ?
 
Krille said:
Speaking of disadvantages, the Caller ID system used in the US and Canada has a "design flaw" in the sense that it sends the Caller ID info between the first and second ring which means that it's not possible to block calls silently (one ring will always get through).
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Simple; turn off the phone's ringer and let the software do the ringing.

View attachment ring6.zip
 
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