30 Dec
2005
30 Dec
'05
2:08 p.m.
On 12/30/2005 at 1:23 AM Richard wrote:
Which reminds me of an interesting story. These modems
were only
rated for 1200 baud. We used them at that speed for several weeks
before I said "why not just turn up the baud rate and see what
happens?" -- one of those questions young teenagers ask because they
don't know any better :-). So we tried 2400 baud. Garbage. We then
tried 1800 baud and they worked flawlessly. Sweet! 50% bonus just
for being experimental!
I remember doing exactly the same thing--those Racal-Vadic modems didn't
seem to be too sensitive to data rate. I recall using one at 2000 baud
with no problems, even though I couldn't get 2400 to work at all.
Anyone remember the old Bell 103 modems? IIRC, the design was something
like a big pile of passives and only a couple of transistors. But then,
300 baud was as good as they got. WE was pretty good at designing circuits
that used the minimum of active components; IIRC, the DTMF touch-tone
dialing circuit was a single transistor.
Cheers,
Chuck