23 Apr
2012
23 Apr
'12
10:06 a.m.
On 23 Apr 2012 at 10:51, Keith Monahan wrote:
USR was *the* modem company for a long time. I loved
their products.
Well, that's a distinction that was passed around for years. The
distinction used to belong to AT&T/WE modems, then Anderson-Jacobson,
Milgo, Racal-Vadic. By the time you hit the late 70's, there were
various modems-du-jour. Telebit, Motorola, Hayes... I used a Racal-
Vadic 3451 triple modem for quite some time. But modems of that time
were extremely dumb--so they tended to work forever if designed
correctly.
I think I have a floppy drive box somewhere that's powered from a
Racal power supply.
I still have a few of my BBS modems, all external and mostly USR--a
Courier HST, a Dual-Standard, a V.Everything... I think it's
remarkable that USR would sell you an upgrade kit (usually a PROM and
perhaps an SRAM chip) rather than demand that you buy a completely
new unit. Not something that would happen today.
I have some consumer-level modems that were used less than a week,
including the Zoom, Hayes "business modem", etc. I got rid of my
Sportster 56K modems within a couple of months of having purchased
them. Not very good, IMOHO.
--Chuck