#High Speed Modem BUY???
32 messages in this thread
I am in the market for an External High Speed Modem 9600 baud or geater
— Which is the BEST to get??
I saw the On-Line Store ad in the November Issue of CompuServe's monthly
Magazine for a 9600 Baud External Modem for $169. Does anyone have this
modem and if so how do you like it?
Any recomendations on which one to buy?
THANKS!
— Gary Lucas —
Gary,
Many with 9600 baud modems, as a matter of fact most BBS systems that I've
been on that offer 9600 baud, prefer the US Robotics Courier HST or Dual
Standard. I think they sell for about $500 average, but don't quote me. A
9600 baud external for $160?? Hmmm..I'll have to look through the CIS
magazine again, I must have missed it. Sounds too good to be true.
Glenn
I think Supra is advertising its SupraModem 2400 Plus (2400 baud with MNP
Level 5) as [C ) as "Transfer speeds up to 9600 bps". Not a good thing to
do, because there are a lot of people who don't understand that it's still
only 2400 bps but the compression makes it go faster.
Did Supra ever (many moons after starting the ads for it) start shipping
the 2400 Plus? They told me a number of times that they couldn't get the
chip sets they needed to go into production.
Ron
If their design and customer support of the 2400 Plus modem is anything
like some of their other products, it would be most unfortunated that they
did get it into production.
Bill, K3OZM
My Supra 2400 (non MNP) works very well, and when the old one gave up the
ghost they did an excellent job in replacing the board and power supply.
Ron
Nice to hear somebody isn't getting the shaft from Supra. Given my
experiences with the company, I will never have another Supra item in my
house, nor can I, in all conscience, recommend any of the company's
products to anyone.
Bill, K3OZM
For just a very small charge plus shipping, they took my modem, replaced
the innards with the newest version and replaced the power supply; my
original had been one of the very first they had made and they had made
improvements since.
Ron
Bill,
Interesting….my own experiences with the company, both before and
after I was a sysop here have been nothing but positive. In fact, I like
their modems so much, when we needed to replace a bunch at work, I ordered
10 Supra's from my local dealer.
That's not to say everyone's experiences will always be positive,
and obviously you are unhappy…but I believe your experience was atypical
of the way Supra deals with customers.
Don
My problem was(is) with a Supra floppy disk drive. It causes major
contention problems when I try to use it as an external drive on my 2000.
(I've tried two separate drive with the same problem – confirmed by the
local dealer on his demo machines. All other manufacturers drives tried on
the machines worked fine.)
Called Supra customer service (????) line, and was told "we never heard of
that problem." They never called back.
Took the drive back to the dealer, who did contact Supra (he also had one
in stock for sale.) The rep. he talked to said it was a know problem, and
to send the drives back. We did.
Two months later (last Friday), the drives came back from Supra with a note
that they checked out OK. The problem still exists.
The dealer has promised to send the drives back again, and give Supra a
piece of his mind about the situation.
Result: I have purchased, now quite a while ago, a drive which is
unusable, which Supra acknowledges has a problem, and which they won't fix.
Thus, Supra has an absolutely negative rating in my mind, and I will never
have another Supra product in my house nor will I recommend their products
to anyone.
Bill, K3OZM
Bill,
Don't be too quick to blame Supra for your problem. Talk to a good
Amiga tech. I had such a discussion with my dealer's tech today (my dealer
asked me to help him out during the Xmas season so I was playing middleman
between a customer and the service center). The customer purchased a
(non-Supra) 3rd party external floppy for his 2000. It wouldn't work. The
symptom was that any disk inserted into the drive would come up "Not a DOS
disk". The drive works fine on the customer's 500 and on the store's demo
2000s. The service tech said he's seen a half dozen 2000s (from 1
particular production run) that will not, under any circumstances, accept
3rd party drives. It is a CBM problem, not the 3rd party drive vendor's
problem. If this sounds familiar you may be giving Supra a bum rap.
-sja
Steve –
My 2000 works with all the drives (floppy) the dealer has in the store,
except the other Supra. The Supra drive does not work with ANY of his 2×00
machines where there are 2 internal floppies.
They symptoms are that with the Supra drive attached, the machine will not
even recognize a WorkBench disk. Every one of them comes up "Not a DOS
disk in Unit 0" roughly 75 per cent of the time. The few times it does
boot at all, it gets about 3-5 lines into the startup-sequence and demands
"You Must Insert WorkBench1.3 in Drive 0" (or other boot disk). This
demand is repeated each line in the startup-sequence thereafter. There is
a 95 per cent chance that the system will GURU before the startup-sequence
finishes. If not, it will GURU almost immediately upon calling any other
application. This ONLY happens when the Supra is attached to my machine or
the others configured similarly in the store. NO other drive available to
us causes such problems. The store owner, an authorized Amiga repair
person, has had the entire system checked and re-checked. Without the
Supra, the problem simply does not exist.
Secondly, when I called Supra's customer service line, the person with whom
I spoke brushed off the complaint as something they had never heard of
before, and they "only buy the drives and stick cables on them." He
conveyed the distinct impression that a mere customer could not possibly
have a problem with his company's equipment.
Thirdly, when the dealer contacted Supra, they told HIM that the problem I
had been having was a known problem, and there was a recall of the drives
in progress. The dealer sent back both my drive and the one he had in the
store to be replaced under this recall. Over two months later, the drives
arrived back in Orlando with a curt note stating they checked out OK.
Nothing had been done to fix the problem.
While some 2000s may have a problem with external drives, mine does work
normally with drives from CBM, from California Access, and there was one
[ MORE ]
[ continuation ]
other whose manufacturer I don't recall right at the moment. Neither my
2000 nor several other machines in the store, even with differing
motherboard revisions so they cannot be a single production run, work with
the Supra drives. Without the Supra, all of these machines, including
mine, work normally.
There is obviously a problem with the Supra drive, WHICH THEY THEMSELVES
ADMITTED TO MY DEALER. Whether they cannot or will not fix the problem
with their product is academic. They have not done so, and there has been
a substantial time period since the dealer diagnosed the problem and both
he and I made Supra aware of the problem (at least 4 months.)
Given the cavalier attitude presented by the Supra customer service
representatitive, and their admission of a problem which they have failed
to rectify, I have long ago written off the purchase price as a terrible
investment, but I see no reason to subject others to similar problems in
dealing with this company. I had thought them a reputable company when I
first purchased the drive, but their action speak much louder than words to
me.
Bill, K3OZM
Bill,
I have 3 Supra modems and had one of their original HDs (for my 1000).
I've never had a bit of trouble with any of their products.
-sja
I have to say my Supra 2400 is still chugging along after all these
years…
– via Whap!
>If their design and customer support of the 2400 Plus modem is anything
>like some of their other products, it would be most unfortunate that they
>did get it into production.
Bill,
My first-hand experience with Supra over the last 8 years (starting with
products for my Atari 600XL) has been nothing short of great. When I
purchased the RAM expansion to go into my SCSI interface they replaced the
board in 4 days, no questions asked. They have always returned my calls
when I had a question and worked with me till the problem in question was
solved.
Lee Scoggins Whap!(Registered) V1.9b–Some things are better left unsaid!
Your experience is directly the opposite of mine with the company.
Bill, K3OZM
They've been great to me, too, Lee.
Betty
Ron,
Not yet (sigh). I have been waiting on the Supramodem Plus for a while
now..
Don't know, I haven't tried to order one. I've been seeing their ads for
quite a while, though.
Jim,
The ad is on page 37 of the November CIS magazine. It's a v.42 bis 9600
baud external modem, with no brand name mentioned. I'd be a bit antsy about
a modem that's a supposed "$399 value" going for $169. There's got to be a
catch. Hmmm..no mention is made of MNP 5, maybe that's why.
Glenn
Well, if it is really a v.42bis modem then it does have MNP level 5 as that
is part of the v.42bis standard. If there is some deception here, it could
be that the add makes no mention of v.32 compatability, which means that
the modem could use some priority handshacking protocal with V.42bis on top
of it, which would mean that it would only work with other modems of the
same brand/manufactuer. Also since no v.32 is mentioned it does not have
to be a true full duplex modem.
-Jason-
Jason, I think you may have a mis-conception about the relationship between
V.32 and V.42; They are seperate. One is a hardware spec. (V.32), the other
is a 'firmware' protocol spec. (V.42). Although they work well together,
they also work well alone.
As a result, a 2400 baud modem with V.42 protocol should be able to talk
with not only regular 2400 baud modems (without using V.42), but also
utilize V.42 when talking to most other modems (such as V.32 hardware) that
also have V.42. Of course, a V.32 modem must be able to step down to 2400
baud first before using V.42 with the 2400 baud modem, and I believe most
V.32 modems will do that.
Supra's ad (or at least the ones that I've seen) state that the Supramodem
Plus is their 2400 baud Supramodem with the V.42 protocol as a bonus. So it
should be full-duplex at 2400 baud with the V.42 (or V.42bis, actually)
compression added.
Christopher,
I think that I have a pretty good understanding of what V.32 and V.42 as
well as the difference between v.42 and v.42bis (also the proposed
v.32bis). As you stated V.32 is a hardware spec similar to Bell 212 or
V.22 while V.42 is simple a protocal such as MNP. You can have a modem use
any form of hardware handshaking and still have the V.42 error correction
and data compression on top of it and thus call it a V.42 modem. Hayes
makes a modem call the Hayes SmartModem 9600 V series which uses Hayes
propriatary ping-pong protocal as the hardware spec and V.42 as the error
checking. V.32 is a spec for 9600 full-duplex and does not include having
any error checking or data compression, so it is advantagous to have the
v.42 (or better yet v.42bis) error checking on top of the v.32 hardware.
The v.42 standard calls for its own form of error checking and will fall
back to MNP level 3, if the other side of the connection only supports MNP.
The V.42bis adds data compression which is not in either MNP 3, or V.42.
Now, what I said in the last article is that the modem which advertised
itself as v.42 automatically had MNP level 3 as that is built into the v.42
standard. Also I warned that just because the modem advertised v.42 didn't
mean it used a standard hardware spec such as v.32 or v.22, as a result
even though it has v.42 it will still only be able to communicate with
modems using the same hardware spec, which in the case of Hayes means only
other Hayes V series.
-Jason-
The Supra ad looks something like this:
SupraModem 2400 ….
SupraModem 2400 *plus* ….
I think that makes it kinda clear that the plus is the usual 2400 baud
Bell 212 with added V.42bis firmware. There is no reason why Supra would
(or could) do otherwise.
Gary:
You'll want to check the fine print at the bottom of the ad. I don't know
if I trust a company that lists big prices in their ad, then at the bottom
in very small print they say to add 7% to all prices shown. Something not
right about that.
The ad says that the modem has Hayes compatability, but it doesn't say what
is compatible. Does the modem comply with the Hayes AT command set only?
The only standard they mention is the V.42 data compression standard, which
seems to be emerging as a standard. They don't mention what the data
format is. Is it V.32, Hayes, US Robitics HST, or something else? The
standard there is somewhat more undefined. V.32 seemed to be the emerging
standard however US Robitics made some early gains by selling their modems
to BBS operators at very discounted prices.
What I purchased for the office is US Robitics dual standard modems that
have both HST and V.32. They're running about $580 now, although they were
$1,000 earlier this year. Another option is a 2400 BPS modem with MNP-5
data compression, which can give up to 4800 BPS when transferring text
(lower speeds when sending data), although you should be aware that CIS
does not support any MNP level higher than 4 right now.
Hope this confused things adequately. Paul
The Supramodem Plus is a 'regular' 2400 baud modem with V.42bis as well as
MNP5.
Paul,
Thanks for the info. I thought that if it was advertised in Ci$
Magazine then surely it must be a "Good Deal" but it does sound too good to
be true. Are there other companies making High Speed Modems with a more
ecconomical price? (300-450 range).
— Gary Lucas —
Gary,
I've used a Telebit T1000 at work and would have no hesitation in
recommending it. It will do 9600 baud, but not do anything faster, like an
HST mode. It's the only modem I've ever worked with that works reliably
when I have to call Ottawa, Ontario from Los Angeles. I _think_ that they
can be found for around $600 or so.
David
David,
Thanks for the info. I'll check into Telebit T1000
— Gary Lucas —
>I saw the On-Line Store ad in the November Issue of CompuServe's monthly
>Magazine for a 9600 Baud External Modem for $169. Does anyone have this
Gary,
I don't have that issue of the magazine in front of me, so I'm not sure
about the particular modem you are referring to. If it's the one I'm
thinking of it is actually a 2400 baud modem with MNP5 which allows
compression of the data to give a throughput of 9600 cps.
Another thing that I've noticed recently in ads are several modems that
sell for considerably less than most HST or Dual Standard modems. These
operate using a proprietary standard. This means that they can only
communicate with modems from the same manufacturer.
Lee Scoggins Whap!(Registered) V1.9b–Some things are better left unsaid!
Gary,
A 2400 baud MNP-5 would only give you 9600 baud thorughput, if you were
sending completely empty pages of text! 🙂 At best 2400 MNP-5 claims to
approch 4800 baud throughput under ideal conditions and data type. Most of
the time you are looking at the 20%-30% percent faster than 2400 baud area
text will be faster, compressed files will be much slower. What most of
the 2400 MNP modems will let you do is talk to your modem at 9600 baud even
though the throughput over the phone is still only around 2400 baud.
You are right about all the adds for propriety 9600 baud modems and them
only working with there own kind.
Also, we are starting to see a huge price drop in true V.32 9600 baud
modems, on UseNet there is a log of talk about all the less than $500 V.32
9600 baud modems!
-Jason-