home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Floppyshop 2
/
Floppyshop - 2.zip
/
Floppyshop - 2.iso
/
diskmags
/
0022-3.564
/
dmg-0139
/
news.txt
/
comms.asc
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1997-04-16
|
9KB
|
145 lines
--SitComm-May-1990--------------------------------------------------------------
Making the most of your modem
Part 1 - What type of modem to buy?
Since most people who are reading this must have already worked
out how to log onto a board, download files and un-archive them,
I will assume a basic level of intelligence!
Firstly, it is in your best interest to purchase the fastest
modem you can afford. Although you may have been brought up in a
society where you generally try to find the cheapest model of
anything this does not work with modems because your running
costs (i.e. phone bills) soon make your initial modem purchase
pretty insignificant in comparison. At the moment,most bulletin
boards will support up to 2400 baud and there are an increasing
number that support HST or V32. Almost everybody will save the
cost of a faster modem in the reduced phone bills after only a
few quarters.
If you call bulletin boards at 300 baud then STOP IT! It is
costing you a fortune. There are very few modems that won't at
least support V23 (1200/75). Some of the cheaper modems may
require you to use a special program to allow the use of the
split baud rates. On the ST a program called V23EMU will allow
you to use unbuffered V23 modems. Almost every ST based board
will have this in its download areas and if you have difficulties
setting it up then most sysops will be glad to sort out the
problem. There is nothing sadder than watching someone logged on
at 300 baud.
V23 (1200/75) callers are amongst the most disliked group of
callers to your average sysop because they are quite happy to
download for hours on end, but because they can only upload at
300 or 75 baud they rarely (if ever) do. Another problem with
V23 is that cheap imported modems or the newer faster modems
often do not support this speed, so Sysops are left in a dilemma
about whether to go put a fast modem on their board at the risk
of losing a lot of callers. So by using V23 who are holding back
the use of more advanced technology. If you are a V23 caller
then do yourself a favour and buy a 2400 baud modem. There are
several reasonably priced modems from the likes of Hi-Tech,
Frontier and Amstrad, or you could get a 2nd hand one. You'll
wonder how you ever managed with 1200 baud once you upgrade.
Part 2 - Connecting to a Bulletin Board
I don't intend to go into the mechanics of actually logging on
since as I said before anybody reading this already knows that!
What I will do is to try and point out some "obvious" facts that
may have eluded you before.
You will need a terminal emulation program to use your modem. On
the Atari ST there is a good choice, many of them being Public
Domain or Shareware. Some of the most popular ones include
Uniterm (my favourite), Vanterm and Flash. Most terminal
programs will include facilities to auto-log on to a board,
capture text into a file for later perusal and of course to send
and receive files. I will go into file transfer in more detail
later on, but for now the most used protocols are XModem, YModem
and Zmodem. You should find some of these built into the
program.
Make sure you have set your RS232 settings up correctly. The
main settings will include baud rate (This is the speed used
between the computer and modem and not necessarily the same as
your connect speed, particularly if your modem is speed
buffered). Other settings are length, Parity and Stop bits, for
most bulletin boards setting this to 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop
bit (8N1) is the best. If you set it to 7 bits, Even Parity
(7E1), which for some reason a lot of people seem to do, then you
will not be able to download or upload binary files, though you
will be able to use the message bases. Other settings could
include local echo which should be OFF since most bulletin boards
echo back your characters. Feel free to experiment with the
other settings.
If you call several bulletin boards please try to use a different
password on each board. You may think this is silly, but there
have been cases where people have somehow got hold of a password
file from one board and then used those same passwords on other
boards where those users may have higher privileges to cause all
sorts of damage.
When leaving messages use the normal typing technique of mixed
lower and upper case. If you type in upper case then firstly it
is more difficult to read and secondly it is a convention to
indicate that you are SHOUTING IN A VERY LOUD AND OFFENSIVE
MANNER! If you are one of these people then please try to find
out where your caps lock key is!
Be aware of your phone costs, you should have a little booklet
from British Telecom describing how to calculate phone calls.
The difference between cheap, standard and peak rate calls is
considerable so you should always call in cheap rate times (i.e.
6pm till 8am weekdays and all day Weekends). Also be aware that
if calling foreign countries the cheap rate times may be
different. Try to keep account of how much you use your modem,
then you will not be too surprised when you get the bill at the
end of the quarter. For example a normal trunk call (B rate)
costs you about 4 pounds per hour, so if you are on-line for half
an hour a day then that will cost you 180 pounds per quarter. If
there is a big demo that will take you 60 minutes to download,
then consider how much it is costing and perhaps wouldn't it have
been cheaper to buy it from a PD library instead?
Evening time is the most busy period for bulletin boards because
due to the society we live in, it is the time when most people
have spare time and also telephone bills are cheaper then.
Because of this most sysops do not like people downloading large
files during this time period. Downloading is better done either
early morning or at weekends.
If you are calling a bulletin board to leave a message, then try
to prepare it off-line with a text editor and then upload it to
the board in one chunk. Composing messages while sitting on-line
can be very time consuming, not to mention being awkward with the
on-line editors. If you do upload a message prepared off-line
then make sure your message is saved out in ASCII format. For
example if you use 1st Word disable WP mode before saving. Some
boards have the facility to upload a message using a transfer
protocol like Xmodem or Zmodem. If this is available then use
that. If not then you will have to do an Ascii upload straight
into the text editor. This is fraught with problems and often
you will lose the start of lines. If your terminal program will
allow you, then set the end of line delay to about a second.
Some boards will have the facility to archive and download
messages. If this is available then you should use it because
then you can log on, file all the new messages and log off. Then
you can read the messages in your own time without paying British
telecom loads-a-money. Then if you wish to reply prepare the
messages and call back to upload them. This could considerably
reduce your on-line time!
Phew... This is getting to be a lot longer than I was expecting
and I havn't even started on File transferring or File archiving.
So I guess this will have to wait till the next issue.
~~~OOOO~~~