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Are dial-up modems useful for anything?

Ole Juul said:
I put a modem and two network cards in a Pentium 200MHz and shared with my wife when we only had dialup about 5 years ago. It worked very well indeed. Browsing doesn't slow down at all. If anybody wants to know how to do that, just install the cards and load IPCop, which is a linux distro that requires almost no knowledge to set up for such use.
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I did the same with Red Hat Linux back in the day--and had fetchmail set to dial up and log in every 10 minutes or so to check email. It was pretty easy to do. We were more than 10 wire miles from the CO, however, so speed was never that great.

The one good thing about dialup is that it's independent pretty much from local power. Before the local electrical co-op moved the substation to a spot about 1/2 mile from me, we could get outages that lasted a week. Just fire up the generator every so often to charge the UPS, run the refrigerator and well and login and check mail. Now, when power goes out, DSL is gone also.
 
Chuck(G) said:
A PBX is overkill. A simple KSU would meet needs and be much easier to set up.
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Well, if you install your own PBX, that might be overkill but you can of course go for Hosted PBX and eliminate the need for setting up and configuring the equipment. I am using this service from The Real PBX and it is working fine. Everything is configured by the service provider and even if there are issues, they are resolved by the tech support team.
 
ChyrillStucker said:
Well, if you install your own PBX, that might be overkill but you can of course go for Hosted PBX and eliminate the need for setting up and configuring the equipment. I am using this service from The Real PBX and it is working fine. Everything is configured by the service provider and even if there are issues, they are resolved by the tech support team.
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So it supports connection to POTS desk sets, provides +48VDC, 90VAC ring generation and connection between any two devices without connection to an external service?

Or is this just spam? (Sorry, but I have to ask)

A KSU can be picked up surplus for cheap, doesn't need an outside line for connection and uses very little power.
 
They did make dedicated POTS simulators, we had one at the computer store I worked at for testing. The box had two RJ-11 ports. When the modem connected to port "A" went off hook, it generated a dialtone, any DTMF tones shut it off and port "B" started ringing. It had its fair share of issues, most notably feedback.
 
For the first time today, I tried to dial up a BBS on a vintage computer. I had missed the heyday of BBSes back in the early 90s, and my only memory of needing to use text-based online services was telnet for my email when I first went to college (late 90s). That was over very quickly when I discovered that you could use Outlook Express for college email once you got the IMAP and POP server names.

Since I have downloaded from FTPs, read and posted to newsgroups and joined IRC channels and downloaded from servers there, I would hardly say that I was a newbie with some of the more venerable methods of online communication. I recall using a dial up modem to call a friend and play Quake, not always successfully. I had not used a dial up modem since 1999, and then essentially just to get access to the ISP.

As I mentioned on page 9 of this thread, when I acquired my Tandy 1000SX some time ago, it came with a Tandy 1200 BPS internal modem. At the time I could fathom no use for it, but as it was a true Tandy product of the 1000-era, I thought it may have been worth something to somebody. This thread inspired me to find some use for it, even if not a very impressive use either at the time nor today. Since my ISP, Comcast, does not provide dial up Internet access and I would think that Netzero and Earthlink would require Windows PCs to maintain an ad-based Internet Gateway, I decided that I could try to dial up a BBS.

First, I had to get the right software. Having no prior experience before, I could only hope I could find a simple enough to use Terminal Emulator. I had used Telix 3.15 back in the days when I was making serial null-modem transfers from my XP machine to my 5150. I got numbers from http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/dialbbs/ I tried two of the current numbers and they both worked! I was able to connect, start new accounts and explore the bulletins and file servers. At 1200BPS, I could see the text draw itself across the screen, and the main menu screens took half a minute to load.

I also found that I had to enter letters on the keyboard with care. Sometimes there would be some garbage characters at the prompt, and sometimes the text output would appear corrupted. I wonder whether this was due to the modem speed, CPU speed 8088 @ 7.16MHz, the Tandy 1000 keyboard or some less than stellar line quality.
 
33black said:
Typically that's the less than stellar line quality.

Did you have POTS copper lines? or were you trying to use VoIP?
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My copper wire runs from the wall to the cable modem. I use Comcast Digital Voice, which I understand uses technology similar to VoIP. I know that VoIP technology has issues with analog modems.
 
I recently inherited some modem equipment, thought I'd post what I got here:
#1 USRobotics 8-bit ISA modem
#2 USRobotics 8-bit ISA modem w/ soundcard
#3 PB2400PLUS Packard Bell external modem (2400bps)

I really like the 8-bit ISA USR modem, it's very well made, and has the same soft texture as a 3COM 10/100 NIC: I have many of those NICs btw, loads of PCI, one MCA, and one ISA.

Back to the modem equipment, I would like to try and use it some day. Maybe there's a dial-up ISP offering it for cheap.
The packard bell external modem has blinky red LEDs which are fun to observe.
 
I have that same PB2400PLUS in the box. Looking forward to using it one day. I have a feeling VoIP will develop a lot better quality once bandwidth expands a ton in the home.

I wonder if some enterprising young retrocomputing enthusiast out there could develop a box/software that will serve specifically that function.

I mean, we can stream HD video and audio over cable internet, but for some reason they dumb down the bandwidth on the VoIP.
 
Eh, long story and rant-bait but as optimistic and much as I'd love to agree they dumb it down, filter it down to below the human hearing range, add lossy codecs to compress and half ass it so we can still matrix the noises together but the unfortunate reality is so they can over sell and put more connections than they can or would ever want to really be able to support.
 
barythrin said:
Eh, long story and rant-bait but as optimistic and much as I'd love to agree they dumb it down, filter it down to below the human hearing range, add lossy codecs to compress and half ass it so we can still matrix the noises together but the unfortunate reality is so they can over sell and put more connections than they can or would ever want to really be able to support.
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I agree. Digital voice services are never going to get better. People have gotten used to the way it is and there is no economic incentive to make any improvement. It might even get worse.
 
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