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Reviewed by Kell Gatherer
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I suppose someone who is techno-ignorant (such as myself) is as good a chap as any other to be asked to write a review of a high-tech piece of equipment. At any rate, I hope I'll come across as the end-user, rather than a geek trying to sell you the darn thing.
In this instance, it's a Terminal Adaptor (TA), which is the piece of equipment that replaces your modem when you switch to ISDN. Effectively, a TA is a modem, in that it does pretty much everything that a modem does, but it does it in the way that ISDN expects.
An ISDN line is installed in the same way as an ordinary telephone line. For those of you who thought there might be some kind of magical fibre-optic connection, you'll be disappointed; between the socket on the wall and the exchange there is little more than a two-core copper cable of the same sort as all other telephone lines. The 'magic' of ISDN, if there is any, is done at the exchange. The box on the wall is a bit different from an ordinary telephone socket, however, and has a green light glowing on it to show that it is working. Recently, I moved my socket from one room to another without calling in the engineer (something I really shouldn't have done I know), and received an electric shock while fiddling with the wiring. It felt like a hundred volts, but I haven't had my fingers re-calibrated recently, so I may be wildly wrong.
As with a modem, one end of the terminal adaptor is plugged into the serial port on your computer, and the other end plugged into the ISDN socket (using a non-standard connector which comes with the TA). Then you re-configure your software - in my case Voyager - and Robert's your mother's brother.
Castle Technology supply a TA called 'Dynamode' which, although with a different name and colour of casing, was identical to the Magic Xpress TA which was supplied to me last year by Argo Interactive (I have been unable to account for the difference in price). As a result, I only have experience of one type of TA, but I assume there can't be much of a difference between models. The biggest noticeable difference compared to a modem is that there isn't a loudspeaker built in, so you are denied the pleasure(?) of listening to all the squeaks and trills usually associated with modem-speak.
The actual connection time, i.e. the time between clicking on the 'Connect' and being connected, is very small indeed, normally about three seconds. There then follows, at least with Argo (Pipex), an 'authentication' process which seems to add about six or seven seconds to the connection time. I'd be intrigued to find out if this is the case with other ISPs because, in my experience, the authentication often fails, necessitating a re-connection; this is not what I expected when I had the ISDN installed.
Assuming, however, that you're past the guards, and connected to the internet proper, what's it like to use a TA as opposed to a modem? The answer is not a lot really. Everything behaves as it did before, although noticeably quicker. The current standard modem speed is 56k, and a TA normally connects at 64k, which doesn't sound like a big leap forward. However, an ISDN connection is much 'clearer' than an ordinary phone line, and a lot of time is wasted by a modem asking for a block of data to be re-sent because it didn't come through correctly. As a result, ISDN connection at 64k feels significantly faster.
Now, an ISDN connection is actually two telephone lines, and you can plug two devices into the sockets, for example a TA and a telephone. In the advertising, it is claimed that you can 'double-up' the lines to provide an internet connection at 128k. In practice, I haven't been able to do this, nor do I want to, for two reasons:
a) the software doesn't exist on the Acorn platform to take advantage of this type of connection.
b) when you do, you are paying for two telephone calls simultaneously, thus doubling the cost of connection.
In our case, we are making use of the second line using our old 56k modem (sounds daft I know). Another computer on the network has ArcFax installed, and each of our computers can send faxes, via the printer drivers, direct down the telephone line without involving paper. ArcFax can handle embedded commands, which means that you can send a fax containing the fax number, and ArcFax will automatically dial and send the fax without anyone having to do anything. In fact, it is perfectly possible for someone to be working at that computer without being aware that it is sending a fax. It's also possible to receive faxes, so effectively we now have two fax lines, useful when the main one is busy. A step towards the paperless office, I hear you say, although I don't see our stationery supplier going out of business just yet.
What more to say? Not a lot. Once you are used to seeing the little box in the corner with its flashing lights, you can pretty much forget it's there. I do find, however, that it likes to be switched off once in a while. Recently, I couldn't make a connection and, after blaming everyone else within blaming distance (BT, Argo, Pipex, etc), it worked fine after I'd switched it off and switched it on again. I suppose, like me, it needs its sleep once in a while.
Prices
Magic Xpress TA (Argo Interactive): £126.62 + £6 delivery (UK) + VAT
Dynamode TA (Castle Technology): £99 + £11 delivery (UK) + VAT
Kell Gatherer, kell@locationworks.com
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