[vcf-midatlantic] Hayes 300bps SmartModem for museum exhbit?

Adam Michlin amichlin at swerlin.com
Thu Jan 30 21:13:59 EST 2020


Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the responses both public and private! We have an offer 
of a 1200 bps Hayes which will be plan A unless someone else is 
interested in donating a 300 bps Hayes.

We're asking for the Hayes specifically to show people that the "Hayes 
command set" really had a "Hayes" hardware origin. Each modem has been 
selected for historical reasons to tell a story. We do have a lot modems 
in the warehouse and we are working on putting them in one space, but it 
should come as no suprise that most of the modems are fairly uninteresting.

Most imporantly, it has been pointed out that I gave short shrift to the 
Telebit referring to it as merely a "business" modem. It was a very 
popular modem for Unix types using UUCP 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP> particularly because of its early 
success at 9600 bps (in a 2400bps world) through the proprietary PEP 
protocol. I also believe PEP was valued for some time even past the 
standards V.32 and V.32bis as a more reliable protocol for such things.

I actually grew up with Telebit modems as my father's company provided 
them to employees for remote access to 370  mainframes. I was also a 
sysop and still remember the day my Courier Dual Standard Sysop modem 
arrived (1/2 price off at $500! 14.4kpbs HST and V.32bis!!!). All 
meaning this is a very special exhibit for me which is a small tribute 
to the memory of Randy Suess <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Suess> 
co-founder of the CBBS bulletin board <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBBS>.

Keep the suggestions coming! If we can't use it for this exhibit, 
another exhbit is soon to come!

Thanks again,

       -Adam

On 1/30/2020 8:16 AM, Adam Michlin via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> We're building a museum exhbit on historical modems. RIght now we have:
>
> Acoustic
>
> USR 300 bps
>
> USR Dual Standard Courier 14.4kbps (Sysop badged)
>
> Telebit T2500
>
> Hayes 9600 bps
>
> USR Sportster V.92
>
> The idea is feature the beginnings (acoustic) and ends (USR V.92) and 
> several important modems in both the hobbyist space (the Dual Standard 
> being very popular with BBSs) and the business space (Telebit).
>
> We'd like to replace the Hayes 9600 with a Hayes 300 SmartModem so 
> people can see the modem that birthed the Hayes command set. Research 
> indicates that the 300 is the first with the Hayes AT command set, but 
> any corrections are welcome. Does anyone have a 300 they would be 
> wiling to donate or lend?
>
> Museum exhibits will be changed much more frequently, although not on 
> any set schedule as of yet, so any loan will most certainly be for 
> less than one year.
>
> I'll add that, as it stands, this is a behind glass exhibit. There 
> certainly is the possibility of connecting some of these (or other)  
> modems to machines as we consider possible infrastructure capabilities 
> on the museum.
>
> Thanks!
>
>      -Adam
>
>



More information about the vcf-midatlantic mailing list