btw 44kb was our big leap up from 9600 at coat. Two 44kb lines was the
competitor that led to the observation by Mike Prince to not underestimate the
bandwidth of a box of 9-track tapes on a Greyhound bus.
From: oaktable-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oaktable-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Bjørn Engsig (Redacted sender "bjorn" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2021 6:02 AM
To: oaktable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [oaktable] Re: OT: Dial-up visual
I would also say BASIC.
And I also remember those rogue calls to my phone that really came from a modem
and being able to whistle some tones that the modem at the other end would
react to.
I only used 300 baud rarely, but I did do quite some work over 1200 baud lines
with a terminal at my home. I forgot the brand, but there was a great new
feature in some model that it would have four virtual terminals which were
synchronized so sending some specific escape sequence made it switch between
four terminal sessions at the other end. You could use vi in one session and
have a compile in the other while maybe having elm (the advanced full screen
mail reader) open in a third. Talking about vi, I also recall it was smart
enough to change the actual number of lines displayed depending on the terminal
speed. At 1200 the default was 16, at 300 it was 8. The quantum leap with
modems was going from 9600 to 56k as the latter did allow a reasonable
performance with TCP/IP.
/Bjørn
On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 22:17, Mark W. Farnham <mwf@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Excellent sonic replay! I whistled the link carrier tone before it came on and
it was right on pitch!
I wish I had a picture or could find one on line of using a fred box and two
acoustic modems to make computers talk to each other pre-internet.
Part of the process of establishing the link was to whistle the carrier tone to
move from the teletype’s modem where you got a remote program ready to talk to
one of the modems connected to the fred box. Transmitting the source code and
then verifying it was a bear until things like DaTapaSS and Kermit were written
with cdc and limpfel zif to ask for real time retransmission. It turns out
sending files twice and running diff was the pragmatic solution, occasionally
sending a third copy if groking which line was the good one was a challenge on
differences. And yes, everything was line numbered so our “xdiff” program could
easily synch up. When you’re porting to 26 different targets, you had better
write a portable diff of your own…
it was a real drag when one of them could only do 300 baud…
Okay, for 42 points:
1) What was the hardest target to get the handshake of the sending and
receiving target to work on? (CDC chronos was 2nd hardest.)
2) What was the most portable language circa 1981-1984? (OMG. 40 years ago.)
mwf
From: oaktable-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oaktable-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of douglas rady
Sent: Monday, January 04, 2021 1:58 PM
To: oaktable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [oaktable] OT: Dial-up visual
Remember what that dial-up modem sounded like?
Here's what it looked like ...
https://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html
