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- Date: Saturday, 14 April 1984
- From: Russ Smith
- To: net.micro
- Re: modems and heat problems
-
- A while back I posted a request for help concerning problems I was
- having using MDM7xx on a homebuilt z80 based machine with a Hayes 1200
- Smartmodem and an h-19 terminal. The problem was that I could hook the
- Hayes directly to the terminal and talk both ways to another machine
- without any problem but if I hooked the Hayes and the h-19 to my
- machine I could only send stuff to the other machine, received stuff
- being totally garbaged. The problem seemed to go away after I just
- turned everything off and reseated boards...it didn't.
-
- Well, the recent net traffic about modem heating problems got my
- synapses firing...
-
- I took the front cover off the Hayes, placed a muffin fan blowing at it
- about 4" away, and all symptoms have "permanently" disappeared.
-
- Apparently my chicken-wire-and-spit homebuilt machine is close to the
- limit with the "receive data from modem" baudrate. Hence when the Hayes
- started drifting due to heat, the received characters started getting
- garbaged (framing error). This caused the modem-to-computer-to-terminal
- setup to go south. When I "reseated" the boards, I had to turn
- everything off, thus giving the Hayes time to cool down and causing the
- problem to go away (temporarily). This red herring behavior led me
- astray until I read the recent net stuff.
-
- When just hooked in as a modem-to-terminal setup everything worked
- okay, so I have to conclude that the h-19, using newer technology
- (software programmable UART), is more tolerant of out-of-spec received
- baudrate than my "old" hardware-programmable-UART-based Godbout
- Interfacer (sans II (inside "joke"...))
-
- Now the problem is to find a way to sufficiently cool down the Hayes
- without the silly muffin fan...
-
- Keep them informative messages coming, they've helped more than once,
-
- Russ Smith
-
- Date: Tuesday, 10 April 1984
- From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!darrelj
- To: net.micro
- Re: Hayes 1200 Problems
-
- First note that the bit pattern in 'U' is 01010101. What can happen is
- that since the modem actually sends of four states for PAIRS of bits,
- noise can occasionally get one of the modems out of proper sync with
- the data stream. Another thing which can happen is that the Bell 212
- protocol includes a way to put the far end modem into a loop-back self-
- test mode (and occasionally noise will mimic the sequence). In fact
- this just happened to me while reading about other 1200 bps problems
- (symptom: first, about 20 Us, then remote end started loopback, echoing
- exactly what I typed, notable in that RETURN comes back without the
- LINEFEED that unix adds), and I fixed it on my old Prentice 212 by
- turning the Remote-Digital-Loop control on and off, taking the remote
- modem out of loopback mode. Or course most of the new cheap 212
- compatibles save some of the money by taking out all the switches (the
- prentice has 5 on front panel, ~40 internal, plus 10 LEDs and output
- level programmable with an external (TELCO provided) resistor). The
- cheap modems will work in 95% of applications and on 95% of phone lines
- instead of all applications and 99% of lines. Generally, an acceptible
- tradeoff.
- --
- Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD
- System Development Corp.
- 2500 Colorado Ave
- Santa Monica, CA 90406
- (213)820-4111 x5449
- ...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3,trw-unix}!sdcrdcf!darrelj
-
-
- Date: Monday, 9 April 1984 20:07-MST
- From: decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdchema!bam
- To: net.micro
- Re: Hayes 1200 Problems
-
- The Hayes Smartmodem 1200 had a firmware problem where it would hang in
- a locked state under certain conditions. This could usually be
- remedied only by power on reset.
-
- If this is what is actually going on, call Hayes and they will fix it
- for you free of charge.
-
- Bret Marquis
- --
- Bang World Communication Center - San Diego.
-