With the announcement this week that US Robotics is being purchased by a VC company, I began tripping down memory lane thinking about all the times that I have come across USR and used their products over the years. Having been left for the dead after 3Com had consumed them and then split them out, it is nice to see that USR is still hanging in there. USR has been around as long as I have been in this business. They were one of the early vendors at the dawn of the PC era, and helped to get the whole BBS industry moving along with their modem racks and deals with Compuserve (remember them). They began their corporate life making modems, taking their name from a company in Asimov’s robot SF stories. By the way, these are the very same stories that generated a flop of a movie starring Will Smith last year. I won’t make any further comments other than I was a big Asimov fan in my youth and read most if not all of his first 80 or so books.
Nowadays USR is more than just modems, and they sell a full line of access products including routers. We even use one of their print servers here in Tom’s HQ.
But modems? Aren’t they so, well, last century? You know, that empty jack on the back of your computer that looks like the plug you put your Ethernet cable in, only smaller? Who uses a modem these days, anyway?
I was trying to think of the last time I actually plugged in my modem and did something useful with it. It must be at least several years. I don’t currently have any Internet dial-up access accounts, but I can remember when I wouldn’t be out on the road without at least one or two of them. I don’t think I have even tried out the fax software on my current laptop, and I avoid all hotels with just dial-up when I travel. You could say that I am a broadband snob, but the truth be told, I just don’t want to deal with modems anymore.
I know, there are many places on the planet where modems are still in popular use, especially in those countries where broadband is expensive, inconvenient, or impossible to obtain. I feel sorry for you, believe me. The only sounds I hear from my computer these days are the annoying ones that come with Windows starting up, rather than those beeps and squeals as the modems synch up.
Back in the day, I was a modem maven. I still have (rooting around my ancient history files in my desk for a moment) a crib sheet that I put together back when I was working in IT support land that had the essential Hayes AT command set for dialing a 1200 bps modem. I could do all sorts of tricks with these, and it was always a challenge when I got ahold of a new modem to try to push its performance to the limit and get the maximum throughput from it. Sorta like overclocking your CPU, only a lot easier because all you needed was a couple of software commands and a cooperative phone line. If you want to get an idea of what these things looked like, here is one reference page.
Now, the word Hayes is from another modem company that was popular in those early days, named after a very flamboyant CEO who went down equally in style. Just to put things in perspective, I think those early modems went for around $500 in the mid 1980s. Now of course modems come in practically everything but cereal boxes, and you can’t buy a computer that doesn’t have one built-in, even if you don’t need it.
Now we see the word modem usually attached to DSL. This is interesting because the DSL modem doesn’t modulate or demodulate the signal, which is what the word modem actually means. But who wants to quibble over that?
I am happy for USR, really I am. I hope their new owners can try to polish the company and bring back some of the luster from the early days. Or maybe get Will Smith as their new spokesman.
NB: When I originally wrote this column, I asked readers to send in some good modem stories to share. Here are the results.
Some of your comments concerned the high quality of USR modems, and how long these modems have been working without fail, and why modems are still needed for doing productive work. Here are some of these comments:
“The Sportster 14400 stayed with me for many years, through many hand-me-down computers, my first Intel based system, and my first retail computer purchase (a Packard Bell Pentium 233 Mhz). I used it to hook up to everything from Prodigy, to Juno, to Compuserve, and finally AOL. It never let me down and is, I am proud to say, the most reliable piece of computer hardware I have ever owned.” Another reader said, “I bought my USR External Modem 56K 10 years ago! I use this modem to connect to the Internet everyday for 10 years (I think it’s my old friend).”
My favorite comment about longevity: “I’ve used U.S Robotics modems as my main modem all my life. Then again I’m only 16 years old. I’m glad to see there are other people out there who appreciate good hardware when they see it, my U.S Robotics modem always connected at 53 kbps, maybe once a year at 48 kbps.”
Another reader wrote about how modems are still useful for faxing applications:
“We have a large modem bank for receiving faxes from our customers (college students and their parents) and these faxes go directly into our document imaging system for processing. Without the fax modem bank it would take a day (or more) longer to process these documents. On average we receive 60,000 pages via fax each year. What brand do we use for this modem bank you might ask? U.S. Robotics Courier V.Everything 🙂 On a personal level here is another reason for having modems around. If I want to submit documents to the company that run my healthcare savings account, I can’t email them attachments, they only take faxes or mail. If I fax them my documentation, I will get my check in two days. If I mail it, two weeks.”
Another faxing application: “I would have to say a good 1000 (if not more) of our medical transcriptionists use the USR or Zoom 56k. To add insult to injury many cannot even get a better then 26.4 connection. We suffer day in and day out troubleshooting modem connectivity just like it was still 1989.”
Back in the day, having modem knowledge was a badge of honor. Bulletin board systems ruled. “And the best part was – almost everyone you met on a BBS was a kindred spirit – everyone _had_ to be a geek of some sort if they had a modem.”
And when dial-up connectivity was king, there were also people that tried various hacks. “Remember the hang-ups your ISP would give for being inactive too long, and all the little ways around that, from reloading web pages to little programs that would ping every few minutes? And remember setting up an old Hayes 2400 in Windows 3.1, with all the AT commands. It’s a wonder the Internet ever even took off when it was like that. Remember Trumpet and Winsock?”
Those AT commands have a long legacy. According to one reader, “I was debugging my Motorola cell phone the other day and looked at the transmission log between the program on my laptop and the cell phone. Guess what? AT commands. Way, way, way extended AT commands, but still the same. Commands to up- and download phonebook entries, pictures, ringtones, etc.”
How about connecting two modems to your ISP to get double the bandwidth? Here is one tip from a reader concerning the process called Multilink. “I had two modems available, and used them, and had descent results using this feature for about a year. I would get about 90kbps with Multilink, still descent given I was still paying for a simple dialup account. Now I also had the luxury of having two phone lines, a requirement along with the two modems. One thing I did find out, is that when I used two modems of different models, it worked very well.”
Actual throughput varied tremendously, and here is one reader who tracked down why: “In 1978 I worked in southern California but dialed into a mainframe in Alabama. Some days I couldn’t get much done due to line noise (remember line noise?). I finally learned to watch the weather reports. If there were major thunderstorms in the Southern US between me and Alabama, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get much work done.”
One of my first terminals — even before PCs — was the Texas Instruments Silent 700. It had a 300 baud acoustic coupler — two rubber cups that you inserted the phone handset in, and you had to insert it just right to get a connection. It ran with this awful thermal paper that would almost instantly fade in direct sunlight. As one reader said, “Almost all code editing in this era was done using line editors” and many of the programmers used the Silent 700. If you were really cool you had a model with the APL character set on the keys. Remember APL?
Of course, no memories of modems would be complete without remembering how long it took to download files. “Quickly I got used to the wait times until a file finished to download. I found a good way to improve that time, and was to Prepare my dinner!” And another reader wrote:”I remember downloading my first GIF image not long after getting my 1200 bps modem. It took me about 3 hours to download, and another 2 to render it on my Commodore 64.”
Another reader wrote,
“I spent most of my freshman year (1986-87) in college living at the computer center, writing programs with terminals. The guy down the hall had a Commodore 128, with dual floppies. Sweet. But, then, a buddy of mine got a 300 baud modem for his computer. Oh sweet joy! To be able to connect to the mainframe without trudging across campus! Without making sure they were still open! To be able to program without everyone else asking questions! To be able to take a nap between character displays! Such were the simple joys of youth.
I w i l l n e v e r
f o r g e t t h e
b l a z i n g s p e e
d o f a 3 0 0 b
a u d c o n n e c t i
o n .”
And no story about modems would be complete with remembering busy signals because we were always tying up phone lines. “Your article made me remember a story that was told to me. When I was a kid, my aunt would try to call my mom, and every time she got a busy signal, witch was nearly every time she called, she’d said, “Hello Joel,” and then hang up the phone.”