News Group Posts

modem speed newsgroup answers

Way back when, modems were how computers communicated with each other (and of course the nascent Internet). Modems varied in speed, so the receiving modem would adjust its speed to match the calling modem. Originally, it would also adjust the speed it talked to the computerto match.

It was soon realized that the modem could talk to the computer at a fixed speed (the DTE speed) while talking to the other modem at whatever it needed to.

Everything that follows is related to that.

Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
From: bill@wjv.com.REMOVEME (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: Dial-in gets garbled characters
Message-ID: <FnEK8p.1I56@wjv.com.REMOVEME> 
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 14:00:25 GMT

In article <38675683.BA7430B8@aplawrence.com>,
Tony Lawrence  <tony@aplawrence.com> wrote:
>John Charnetski wrote:

>> Whoa cowboy, holster those firearms.  

>I'm not the cowboy; that's Jeffy Hyman. 

>>I was just sharing, perhaps uninvited, several years of answering
>>those kind of questions. Sort of like when a youngster asks "Where
>>did I come from?" Often the answer they need is 'Montgomery,
>>Alabama'; not a treatise on biological processes. Do whatever
>>makes you feel > good. BTW, I really enjoy reading virtually ALL
>>of your responses.

>I understand.  And, as I said before, it is *good* to give
>the "Alabama" answer, because it may be just what the person
>wants.  OTOH, the nice thing about newsgroups is that you
>are apt to get both answers and more.

And also if it were just an answer to one person then it could have
easily gone by email.  The idea behind posting answers is that if
one person has the question - there are others who also have
problems - and in my opinion and and answer with an explanation of
the answer is far better than an answer alone.

Take for example  the modem discussion which prompted this thread. 

The original post said that he had an old 9600bps modem. (back in
those days they were still being called 9600 baud modems - but I've
not seen a baud and data-rate match in standards conforming modems
since the days of 300 baud modems).

The bps and dce/dte match was almost universally required through 
the first 2400 bps modems.  However when the first 2400 bps modems
introduced error correction and compression, they needed to have
data fed at 9600bps in order to have sufficient data to compress.

So any modem that was made after about 1985 or so can and should
use a locked 9600bps interface rate (or higher), and let the
firmware in the modem handle the rest.

So while the answer with no explanation was correct for the one
question, an explanation of why it is so should be included as all
users problems, while having the same symptoms, may not be the
same.

It's like the old 'take two aspirin and see how you feel in the
morning'.  It works for most - but in some instance could be fatal.

Too many people don't want to know details, but there are times
when too little knowledge will totall trash a computer - and in the
larger picture sometimes is fatal.  A good example of that are the
Darwin awards.

>I will say that I've been a little irritated lately by too
>many "man sendmail" type answers (not from you) which, I
>think, are generally useless.

OTOH there are those with problem who supply too hints about their
problems.  The above example of 'man sendmail' is probably one that
should be more like 'buy the O'Reilly 1100 page book' or post in
comp.mail.sendmail.  

>I'm not referring to someone who says .... but (to pick a really
>crappy example): "man uucp", which is a lousy answer to almost any
>question.

Particulary if the question was not about uucp!

(Sorry Tony, but as a straight man you throw such great leading
questions!)

>However, I suppose it's better to say "man uucp" than nothing at
>all, and frankly I tend to do the latter when I can't summon the
>energy or the interest to properly answer a question, so it's
>probably good that we get those responses too. Thinking about it,
>it isn't actually the terse "man xyz"'s that bother me: it's when
>it's done by a person who can and does do better than that I get
>annoyed. I expect more from certain people here, and when they cop
>out, I'm disappointed :-)

I'll agree with you on that point. 

Bill


-- 
Bill Vermillion   bv @ wjv.com 

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