Where Are The Founders Of The Dial-Up Revolution?

RIMBoy writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently tracked down the founders behind the dial-up modem revolution. The founders of Hayes Micromodem set the standard with their AT Command set. While Dennis Hayes finds himself inducted into the Computer Industry Hall of Fame, at the same time he is broke (with a stop as a bar owner) and trying to find the next big thing. Dale Heatherington cashed out early and has dedicated himself to several projects, including ham radio."

BBS Documentary

[jkeegan]

It's been covered on slashdot many times so I'm sure people will remember, but there is a BBS Documentary [bbsdocumentary.com] in the works.

The history of such revolutions should be documented for future generations to learn from.

Legal, not technical

[AtariAmarok]

I remember reading that the 56K limit was legal, not technical (and that this legal limit is actually something like 53K:

"In the U.S., the FCC places a power ceiling on phone lines of -12dbm average per 3 second interval. X2 modems work within this by restricting throughput to 53kbps in the U.S. X2 modems can theoretically work at 56k, although they are constrained to operate 5% slower than this in the U.S. (Some users have reported occasional connections past 53kbps.)"

(from this page [lowendmac.com]

Re:56K limit...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it 56K (or actually 53K) is the max transmission limit imposed by the FCC in the US. I seem to recall some fear about damaging the POTS infrastructure or something along those lines - not sure if I remember the rationale properly.

I got my Multitech 300 Acoustic coupler out

[teamhasnoi]

and dialed until I found this AT command Set [sdf1.net]

Relive the good ol' days at textfiles.com [textfiles.com]

Re:56K limit...

[crow]

Because that's all the bandwidth there is.

Most calls get digitized by the phone company, and the 53K modems take that into account to get almost all of the theoretical bandwidth. I know someone will correct me, but I think that most phone calls are digitized as 64Kb data streams. There may be some overhead in that, lowering the theoretical maximum throughput.

Of course, if all the phone companies upgraded their equipment to some different standard, they could probably support significantly higher data rates. But then again, isn't that called DSL?

Re:Legal, not technical

[blogboy]

I worked for R&D at US Robotics for the first 56K rollout. Cots in the lab, X2 coffee (twice the grounds) as I used to call it, all week and weekend, to beat Rockwell to the punch. And we did. The first batches of course hit in mid-40's but steadily improved. Rockwell would *report* 53K or so but the actual thruput was far less. It was one of the last great times in R&D I had. Line noise is the limit. It explots the digital switching on the network. Good times.

Re:56K limit...

[mdmarkus]

Between the Central Offices, the connections are digital and multiplexed. The amount dedicated to each channel is 64k with 8k used for switching information. So while it's possible to run better than 56k over a phone line pair (DSL does it at least for limited distances), once you hit the CO, the 56k limit comes into play.

Re:56K limit...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know someone will correct me, but I think that most phone calls are digitized as 64Kb data streams.

You asked for it ... ;)

In the US the phone lines are digitized with 8000 Hz and 7 bits, resulting in a bandwidth of 56 kbps. In Europe 8 bits are used, giving 64 kbps. I can't remember off-hand what Japan uses (they mix happily european and US standards )

So you can't go above 56k and hope to sell your modems in the US, thus losing at least half of your potential customers. It's just not theoretically possible.

Founders of the dial-up revoltion?

[xtermin8]

This is somewhat off-topic, but I think the honor of that particular title should be "The World" http://www.TheWorld.com operated by Software Tool & Die. Since 1989, the first public dialup Internet Service Provider (ISP) on the planet. And we're still proud to be the best. These other guys may have set up the technology, but "the revolution" is another matter. Its like crediting K&R for starting Open Source. Not quite.

I also bailed out....

[Lumpy]

Back in 1995/1996 when 56K modems were becoming the rage I also folded shop and sold my mid-sized ISP that was serving 2 cities. Hayes modem cards in a 19 inch rack chassi were the standard then, 33.6 was the MAX you could get on a good day and ISP's like me that spent the long dollar for the real modems instead of a pile of crap sportsters like one company I remember you could get that speed. (I started as an ISP when 14.400 was the fastest you could get.)

56K killed it for most of us... T1's required for incoming lines as well as horribly priced interfaces for the 56K dial up side made it impossible for the medium/small guy to survive. the Small towns I was going into and started out with 3-4 modems now had a minimum of 24 incoming lines because of the T1 requirement. each dial in node now doubled all it's costs for operation and quadrupled it's costs for equipment.

Dial-up died when 56K came around.

Re:Where are they?

[real gumby]

They're still trying to connect with their 2400 baud modems.

Err, cute joke, but old modems were 110 baud (also speed of a teletype, i.e. TTY). Later 300 became popular, but really took off (so to speak) with 1200 baud. I think Hays' first modem was 300 baud.

I also remember using "split" modems which were asymmetric -- 1200 downstream and IIRC 150 upstream -- which prefigure today's ADSL.

Re:Legal, not technical

[Burdell]

The "53k" limit was a problem with the way X2 worked. Blaming it on the FCC is just a marketing scam; the fact is that the US Robotics engineers couldn't make X2 hit 56k and still work within the pre-defined limits of the telephone system, so they tried to blame someone else.

Lucent's 56k system could actually do 56k and stay within the limits, but the v.90 standard didn't use Lucent's technology for that.

As to why nothing is more than 56k: that is all that a standard voice line (or POTS line, for Plain Old Telephone System) can do. A POTS line is carried within a DS0 (the base channel of the phone system), and a DS0 is 64k. You can't get all 64k though, because many voice lines use "robbed bit" signalling that takes one of every eight bits to handle switch communication. Getting 56k at all requires that one end be a digital line (ISDN BRI or PRI or channelized T1); you can't push 56k through the analog to digital conversion otherwise.

The "what's next" for the telephone system is already here; it is DSL. DSL uses different frequency bands that are not used for POTS lines but that can be carried over the same copper reliably (more or less). However, DSL is not a switched circuit like a modem connection; the DSL frequencies are pulled off the line (by a DSLAM, DSL Access Multiplexer) before the line connects to the regular phone network. So, you can't "dial" a different DSL provider or your friend's house; you can only be connected to one service (and any changes require a call to the DSLAM owner, usually the phone company).

The other "what's next" was ISDN, which would give you the full 64k channel (because signalling is always done on a separate dedicated channel with ISDN), or 128k if you use both channels (the base ISDN line is a BRI, which has 2 64k data channels plus a signalling channel). However, ISDN use was slowed because it was complicated to configure (you couldn't just plug a phone in and use it), required all new equipment, and even the telcos really never understood it well (so when there was a problem, it could take weeks to get it fixed).

Re:56K limit... Ooops Gotta correct this one :)

[PalmKiller]

Actually in europe they have E1 (~2 mbit as apposed to ~1.5mbit total), not a T1(aka DS1) with 30 channels and they can and do run something they call "E1 PRI" over those for 29 B channels and a D channel.

What you described is US PRI T1 which is 23 B channels with a D channel in the US at 64K each(this is what isdn service is based on, you can also run standard telco calls over them). US also has the standard T1 which is 24 channels as you described.

In Japan they call theirs a J1 (or PRI J1) and its based on the US standards, only in the yellow alarm generation/detection and the crc-6 calculation methods.

Re:Easy

[The Salamander]

man motd
man login

touch ~/.hushlogin

Ward Co-INVENTED the BBS! was Re:XModem

[netringer]

Everybody who knows Hayes remembers Ward Christensen's Xmodem file transfer protocol. This was Ward in 1980. I wonder where he is now?

Ward Christensen is right here! [slashdot.org]

More importantly, as I've mentioned Ward, with Randy Suess, also INVENTED THE BBS when this very same Dennis Hayes sent them one of his original 300 baud autodial/auto-answer modems.

Ward will tell you fun details like why CBBS looks for the modem's RING result and then sends the ATO to make the modem answer. CBBS never puts the modem into auto-answer mode.

Why? So that if the CBBS program wasn't running happily, the caller wouldn't waste money on an answered phone call to a BBS that wasn't working.

Ward takes more credit for CBBS than the MODEM* protocol because MODEM was written quickly to fix a problem (sending program files to Randy over the modem-modem link) but CBBS was planned. Ward says MODEM was a response "like a sneeze" He doesn't like taking credit for a sneeze.

* - The real name of the protocol is MODEM. Ward's original MODEM comm program had an option to auto-receive files,. XMODEM was MODEM with the option. When you're the first you don't put in version qualifiers.

Re:Too bad about these guys....

[Elwood P Dowd]

Those were the days when you would dial up some BB and hear EEEEE aaaaaa iiiii shhhhhh oooo bong bong bing (you get the point....)

Ah, but if you concentrate you'll remember that before 56k (or maybe 28.8) modems, it didn't do the boing boing noise at the end. It ended with the static sshhhhhhh, (and maybe had a short even "aeaea" tone or two over the static), and then cut out. The boing boing sound was a shocking late development in modem handshaking art.

Re:Don't forget this

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs got Woz to write the Atari games.

And Jobs stiffed Woz on the money Atari paid them.

See:
This Google cache of www.woz.org/letters/general/09.html [216.239.37.104].

See also:
This second google cache of www.woz.org/letters/general/53.html [216.239.37.104]

You'll need to scroll down a little, but the paragraphs to look at have highlighting in them.

Re:Where are they?

[dougmc]

also speed of a teletype, i.e. TTY

The original TTYs were 50 baud. TDD (Telecomunication Device for the Deaf) uses that standard even today. It's pretty easy to type too fast for them to keep up (but modern hardware has a buffer to help keep from losing characters.)

with 1200 baud

Actually, it's not 1200 baud. It's 600 baud, but 1200 bps (bits per second.) Baud and bps do not mean the same thing -- it's bps that you're thinking of.

Re:Legal, not technical

[blogboy]

Yes, I remember that X2 analysis feature, don't remember the commands tho :) The USR BBS were X2 Total Control racks. Part of the negotiation is a line analysis phase, which was used to determine the best protocol to use (that's the bonging noises testing for 56K capability.)

I think the V.FC couriers needed a daughterboard upgrade in order to support the X2/56K code; the V.34's just needed to flash update their ROM. USR supported the hell out of their Couriers--they knew who their important customers were IMO.

The Whitney was USR's most reliable platform. You could tell what board you had by the last few numbers of your modem's serial number. I think if it ended with 00 you had a Whitney.

Don't know the Courier daughterboard name. There was no Houston IIRC. The modem names were based on Harley Davidson motorcycle names (Courier, Sportster) Not sure where the internal board names came from...

HTH

Re:I also bailed out....

[Anonymous Coward]

As the former owner/president/CTO/janitor of a moderately successful ISP who got out in '99, the worst part about the advent of the 56K lines and their dependence on PRI circuits is that the telco (NYNEX in this case) refused to transfer long-term commitments for analog lines into commitments for the digital circuits. We were left holding the bag for about 60 POTS lines because we'd gone with a long-term Centrex contract.

We made a little money when we sold (got out just in time!) but if I hadn't had to pay off those damn Centrex contracts, I would have been able to buy a new car.

To add insult to injury, every time we tried to add lines into our NOC, we were told there were "facilities issues" meaning they were short on copper pairs in the area. They'd have had plenty if they'd just let us re-negotiate the contracts.

Bastards.

At least I don't shake when I start telling my telco stories now.

Re:XModem

[MavEtJu]

I loved ZMODEM because it got files in bigger 1024kbit chunks?

Hold your horses, zmodem only went to 8192 byte blocks. 1Mb blocks would suck if you had to wait 20 minutes for each block to be retransmitted :-)

Edwin

Website for Dale Heatherington's creations

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.wa4dsy.net shows the data modem he constructed, and also has pages of info on his robots.