Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!dlb!zygot!john
From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: low priced modems (was severe line noise)
Summary: found a good one
Keywords: modem noise filter
Message-ID: <3245@zygot.ati.com>
Date: 4 Sep 89 20:11:38 GMT
References: <434@tron.UUCP> <9411@chinet.chi.il.us> <984@urbana.mcd.mot.com> <513@wet.UUCP>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Lines: 35

In article <513@wet.UUCP>, epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) writes:
> In article <984@urbana.mcd.mot.com> feldman@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Mike Feldman) writes:
> >Also, can anyone recommend any of the low-priced modems, eg. Practical
> >Peripherals?  My father's under $100 1200 baud modem-in-a-plastic-box
> >cooked itself in under 10 hours of use, and I don't want to see him or
> >me sink $$$s into that level of quality again.
> 
> We have/had 2 Practical Peripherals 2400SA modems from younger
> -and-more-(penny-wise-and-pound-) foolish days.  They've never
> quite worked right, and multiple firmware replacements have
> helped, but not cured them.  I say "had" because one of them
> recently failed completely, and has been sent back to the
> manufacturer.  As soon as we get the bucks, these turkeys are
> history.

Sounds like my experience wasn't unique. I have purchased a total of
four Practical Peripherals over the years and two of them were
out-and-out defective. One of the remaining couldn't be used in uucp
service because of firmware screwyness. It would not really honor the
"AT&D3" mode which calls for resetting the user parameters when the DTR
line goes false. As a result, the modem would get into death-grip with
the getty and shut down the line. Calls to the manufacturer were
useless. They had never heard of the problem. A second one did this
intermittantly.

The Everex looked good until I discovered that it used dip switches
rather than EEPROM on its stand alone 2400 model. No thanks!

What I found to work flawlessly was the Prometheus ProModem 2400. I
recommend this as a good, cheap modem. In fact it was the cheapest of
the ones I looked at or tried. (Even it's history now; I have two
Trailblazers. Not cheap, but ooooh so good!)
-- 
        John Higdon         |   P. O. Box 7648   |   +1 408 723 1395
    john@zygot.ati.com      | San Jose, CA 95150 |       M o o !