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Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (Wayne Rigby)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: ZyXEL Elite 2864 Ultra High Speed Modem
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm
Date: 29 Jan 1996 16:13:39 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 470
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Message-ID: <4eirnj$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Wayne Rigby)
NNTP-Posting-Host: maya.cs.umass.edu
Keywords: hardware, modem, commercial
X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 2
Originator: barrett@maya


PRODUCT NAME

    ZyXEL Elite 2864 Ultra High Speed Modem


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    The Elite 2864 is a high speed modem handling speeds of 28.8
kbaud with V.34/V.32bis/V.42bis and many other protocols.  It also
features Facsimile and Voice modes.  In addition, the 2864 is
upgradable to ISDN.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        ZyXEL Communications Corporation
    Address:    4920 East La Palma Avenue
            Anaheim, CA  92807
            U.S.A.

    Telephone:    [phone]
            [phone]  8 am - 5 pm PST
    FAX:        [phone]
            [phone]

    E-mail:        [e-mail]  Sale inquiries
            [e-mail]   Technical Support
    Fidonet:    Primary address:    1:103/725
            Secondary address:  1:202/701.101
    CompuServe:    CIS ID: 71333,2734
            Forum:  GO ZYXEL
    BBS:        [phone]
    FTP:        ftp://ftp.zyxel.com/pub/other/zyxel
    World Wide Web:    http://www.zyxel.com


LIST PRICE

    Unfortunately I could not find a current list price.  However,
ZyXEL offers frequent upgrade prices, including competitive upgrades.
I have seen the Elite 2864 for $260 US in some mail order
advertisements.  The list price when they originally appeared on the
market back in mid-1995 put them in the $600 US range.  The price has
dropped considerably since then.


DEMO VERSION

    None.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        A free serial port is required.  A high speed serial card
        is highly recommended.


    SOFTWARE

        A communications terminal program or network interface
        program with SLIP or PPP abilities.


COPY PROTECTION

    None.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga 3000-25, 2 MB Chip RAM, 12 MB Fast RAM
    2 internal 1760 kB floppies
    Kickstart 40.68 and Workbench 40.42
    MultiFaceCard III
    CyberVision 64 with 4 MB RAM
    Bernoulli Transportable, The Box 150
    Quantum LPS525S, 525 MB internal hard drive
    IDEK Iiyama MF-5021 21" Multiscan Color Monitor
    Epson ActionLaser 1600 with EpsonScript Level 2 Upgrade
    Amiga OS 3.1
    AmiFileSafe 2.2
    AmiTCP 4.2
    Term 4.4


INSTALLATION

    Installation was simple enough.  The modem came with a variety
of cables, including a 25-pin serial cable.  Just attach the modem to
a 25-pin serial port, a phone line into the back of the modem, and the
power cable to the back.  Then with any terminal program, it is ready
to run.


REVIEW

    A few months back I received an upgrade form from ZyXEL
offering me the opportunity to upgrade my older ZyXEL U-1496E to the
brand new ZyXEL Elite 2864.  I jumped at the opportunity, having been
completely pleased with the power of my U-1496E.  So, I sent in the
form and a few weeks later I had a brand new modem capable of 28.8
kbaud communications with the V.34 protocol.  However, I got more than
I bargained for.

    The ZyXEL Elite 2864 comes with the modem, an external power
brick (similar to the Amiga 500's and 1200's with power switch on the
brick), a 25-pin dual-purpose cable, a 25-pin gender changer, a short
phone cord, power cable, a small Quick Start Guide, registration card,
and several floppies of IBM software.

    The modem has a bank of 21 LEDs on the front, along with 2
large push buttons.  On the modem's right side are two jacks, one for
a microphone and one for external speakers.  The modem does have an
internal speaker to make all that harassing noise when one dials and
connects.  Of course those noises can be disabled via software.  The
back of the modem has a power port, a 25-pin serial port, a parallel
port, and 2 phone jacks (one in, one out).

    My roommates nicknamed my modem as the Ludicrous Modem.  And
there is good reason.  I will just list out the various features
below.

    o Supported link speeds between 300 and 28800 bps for data
      communications, supporting the following protocols:

        V.34, ZyX19200, ZyX16800, V.32bis, V.32, V.22bis, V.22, V.21,
        Bell 212A, Bell 103, ZyXEL Cellular, V.42, V.42bis, MNP4, MNP5,
        V.26bis, V.23, V.13, etc.

    o Supported link speeds between 2400 and 14400 bps for FAX
      communications supporting V.17, V.29, and V.27ter.

    o Built in voice compression with the choice of 4 different
      algorithms.  2bits/sample ADPCM at 19200 bps DTE, 3bits/sample
      ADPCM at 28800 bps DTE, 3bits/sample ADPCM at 30720 bps DTE with
      sync bits, and 4bits/sample ADPCM at 38400 bps DTE.

    o Serial DTE speed supported up to 460.8 kbps for synchronous and
      asynchronous communications.  I know of no current serial adapters
      for the Amiga which can handle this speed, however.

    o Optional parallel port connectivity for even higher speed
      asynchronous communications or to hook the modem up to either
      a Postscript Level I, Hewlett Packard (HP) Deskjet 500 series ink
      jet printers, HP Laserjet II printers, HP Laserjet III printers
      and compatibles to automatically print FAXes.  (Note, the HP Deskjet
      500 series and Postscript printer support is new as of version 1.09
      of the firmware.  See the notes below on upgrading the Elite series
      firmware.)

    o A host of standard mid-range modem capabilities.  A quick list
      being Tone/Pulse dialing, non-volatile memory storage for modem
      configurations, remote configuration, security call back,
      Caller ID, distinctive ring detection, line signal quality
      fallback/fallforward, and DTMF detection.

    And now, the nitty gritty...  I have been using this modem
with AmiTCP 4.2/PPP constantly for the five months I have had it. I
have also used it for standard, direct call up connections.  In
addition I had it hooked up to a Pentium 100 to play 2-player Hexen
for a few hours.  In all cases it has performed delightfully.  14.4
kbaud communications are simple enough.  28.8 kbaud communications, on
the other hand, I have not been able attain.  Calling into my Internet
provider's US Robotics V.34 28.8 kbaud modems tends to get me either a
24000 or a 26400 V.34 connection.  This seems to be due to line
conditions.  At 26400, the Elite 2864 quite regularly flashes its
Signal Quality LED, indicating that the line conditions are poor and
it is retraining.  The US Robotics on the other end supports this and
the retrain is usually successful.  However, every once in a while the
retrain will fail and the link will be dropped.  At 24000 connections,
it retrains less, but it does attempt to train up to a 26400
connection now and then, with the same results (about 70% success, 30%
line dropped). This is but a minor inconvenience for me.  I just
offline my PPP connection without issuing a Stopnet, then issue a new
Startnet and nearly all of my connections are resumed without any
apparent interruption.

    The modem can automatically detect and differentiate between
FAX and data connections.  In addition, the modem has a parallel port
on it.  A Postscript Level 1, HP Deskjet 500 series, HP Laserjet II,
HP Laserjet III or compatible printer may be attached directly to the
modem and have it automatically print any FAXes received.  The
computer does not need to be turned on or even connected in this case.
I have played with this feature and it works exactly as advertised.  I
sent FAXes from a FAX machine at work and when I returned home, there
they were in my laser printer's output tray.  My Amiga was not even
powered on.  Unfortunately there appears to be no way to print from
the host computer to the printer attached to the modem without
rearranging cables.  This would have been a convenient feature.

    In addition, the 2864 can be upgraded to have 2 MB, 4 MB or 8
MB of RAM.  This is accomplished with combinations of 1, 2, or 4 DRAM
chips.  The chips are 4Mx4 organized 16Mbit chips in SOJ packaging.
60 or 70 ns chips are suggested.  More specific information can be
obtained from the manual which is available at ZyXEL's Web site.  I
have not looked into how much this RAM costs, but I cannot imagine
that single chips which contain 2 MB of RAM each can be all that
cheap.

    The addition of RAM into the modem allows the storage of FAXes
in the modem's memory, thus eliminating the need for a printer or a
computer to be powered on or connected to receive FAXes.  Just come
home, power on your connected printer, push a button on the front of
the modem, and it will print out all received FAXes.  The manual did
not seem to indicate a way to be able to download FAXes to the
computer from the 2864's RAM instead of printing.

    The modem also supports Voice communications.  I.e., it can
act like an answering machine/phone tree/telephony service.  A
computer program can be written to create a phone tree or answering
machine service using the modem.  This is possible due to the modem's
DTMF tone detection.  (It can detect when a number on a touch tone
phone has been pressed.)  The built in voice compression routines also
are a boon for such applications, compressing the recorded voice
within the modem, taking the load off the computer and reducing the
amount of disk storage necessary to store the messages.  The
compressed voice messages can be sent back to the modem for
decompression or a program can be written on the host computer to do
the decompression.  Sufficient information is in the modem's manual
for writing a program to do this.  In addition, there are various ways
that sound can be directed through the modem system.  Sound can be
compressed from the phone line and passed into the host computer.  Or
sound can be compressed from the modem's microphone jack and passed
into the host computer.  In addition, the inputs (phone jack and
microphone jack) can have their data sent to the optional 2, 4 or 8 MB
of onboard DRAM on the modem.  Messages stored in DRAM can be played
back later in a similar fashion to the storage of facsimiles in DRAM.
The play back can be sent to the handset attached to the out phone
jack in back or out the speaker jack on the modem.

    The Elite 2864 supports Distinctive Ring and Caller ID.
Distinctive Ring is a feature available from the phone company.
Effectively it takes 2 or more telephone numbers and puts them onto
one phone cable.  I.e., 2 or more phone numbers would all go to one
phone.  However, whenever any particular phone number is called, the
phone will ring slightly differently.  The Elite 2864 can detect these
differences and be told to either answer or ignore the particular
distinctive ring.  Thus one can have a data/fax line which the modem
will pick up, a phone tree line which the modem will pick up, and then
a standard voice line which the modem will ignore, passing through for
a person or real answering machine to pick up.  Unfortunately, without
something like this, the modem will not be able to tell the difference
between a voice or fax/data call.  Caller ID is supported and programs
can be designed to pull out the incoming phone number after the first
ring, displaying it on the screen or even announcing it via voice
synthesis.

    The modem's parallel port also allows the modem to be
connected to a computer via a bidirectional parallel port on the host
computer.  This allows the modem to work at full 28.8 kbaud speeds on
computers with slow serial ports (e.g., stock Amiga 500's and 2000's),
and allows computers to use the modem at full ISDN speeds.  However,
ZyXEL does not provide a driver for the Amiga for this.  Drivers are
available for Windows, MS-DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT.  However,
after looking over the the Elite 2864's manual, there does not appear
to be any reason why a driver could not be written for the Amiga.  It
should be easier than it was for other platforms.  All that should be
needed is to write a dummy serial driver that interfaces with a
bidirectional parallel driver.  This should be possible with the
Amiga's built in parallel port, and should definitely be possible with
third party multi-I/O cards like the MultiFaceCard series and similar.
Unfortunately I am not as familiar as I would like to be with Amiga
programming, otherwise I would have already written such a driver.

    The Elite 2864 is one of a series of modems by ZyXEL.  While I
have the standard version, the other versions are similar enough that
I will list the differences here.

    o Elite 2864 - Lowest end Elite.  LED front panel, serial port,
      parallel port, phone jack in and phone jack out.

    o Elite 2864L - Leased line version.  Supports 2/4-wire leased line
      operations.  Otherwise the same as the standard Elite 2864.

    o Elite 2864I - ISDN version with the ISDN S-interface RJ45 connector.

    o Elite 2864IU - Same as the 2864I except it has the ISDN U-interface.

    o Supreme 2864L - LCD front panel instead of LEDs.  Much more
      informative.  Otherwise very similar to the Elite 2864L.

    o Supreme 2864I - LCD version of the Elite 2864I.

    o Supreme 2864IU - LCD version of the Elite 2864IU.

    o Omni 288P - A portable 28.8 kbaud V.34 modem with data/voice/fax
      capabilities but no ISDN capability.  This version is to be attached
      to a parallel port.

    o Omni 288S - Same as the Omni 288P but for attaching to a serial
      port.

    The Elite 2864 modem may be upgraded with an upgrade kit to an
Elite 2864I (either version) by the end user.  Actually it appears
than any Elite 2864 modem could be changed to any other type of Elite
2864 as they are designed modularly.  However, it seems that only an
upgrade kit to an ISDN version is available.

    It is very easy to upgrade the firmware of an Elite modem.
Elite modems include Flash EPROMs, allowing them to be upgraded
without opening the modems up.  Just download the latest version of
the firmware from the Web or FTP site.  Unfortunately these files are
currently only in PKzip format which might be a problem.  There is an
Unzip program available for the Amiga somewhere, however.  This zip
file contains two files.  A note file indicating what has changed
since the last version of firmware and the actual firmware update.  To
upgrade the modem, one just issues an ATUPX command to the modem while
in command mode.  It will as if you really want to do this.  If an
answer of Yes is returned, it starts erasing the EPROM.  After a
moment, it requests that you upload the new firmware to the modem from
the host computer using the Xmodem protocol.  If something fatal
happens in mid-process, there is a way to automatically throw the
modem into the EPROM update procedure by holding down a combination of
the front panel buttons upon power up.  My Elite 2864 shipped with
Firmware version 1.04.  I recently upgraded to 1.09.  It worked
flawlessly and did not even require the modem to be power cycled
afterwards.  It was ready to go immediately after the upload.  A much
simpler process than the older ZyXEL modems of popping out the EPROMs,
erasing them under strong ultraviolet light, and then using en EPROM
programmer to reburn them.


DOCUMENTATION

    Documentation that came with the modem is a small, half-inch
(about one centimeter) thick Quick Start Guide which is stapled
together.

    This manual is just that, a Quick Start Guide.  It is fairly
comprehensive, including all the information a standard user of the
modem will ever need.  However, it does not contain everything a power
user will want to know.  The User's Guide is available on ZyXEL's web
site in either Postscript or Acrobat Reader formats.  The web
administrator indicated that an HTML version was in the works and that
the manuals would be available on the FTP site.  The web site
administrator also indicated that he would be more than willing to
send a printed copy out if one did not have access to a postscript
printer.

    The Quick Start Guide keeps things pretty simple, starting out
by explaining the basic concepts pertaining to modems, how to hook it
up to one's computer, basic settings to be used in the terminal
program, and a quick list of AT command codes used by the modem.
Pretty basic but enough for most people.

    The optional User's Guide contains everything the Quick Start
Guide has.  In addition it goes into much more depth.  It explains the
differences between the various models of the Elite 2864 modems and
Omni 288 modems; an in depth description of the AT command sets used
by the modems; description of the voice compression formats; details
about upgrade options (ISDN, Leased Line, DRAM, and Firmware);
diagnostics; tips and hints, a decent glossary; various appendices,
including one on the Amiga; and a nice index.


LIKES

    What I like about this modem is the quality behind it.  This
is a rather full featured modem great for all those nice buzzwords
like `multimedia ready,' `FAX capable,' and so forth.  This modem is
not for everyone.  It is rather expensive.  However I would suggest it
for small businesses, power users, and quality BBS's.

    In addition, ZyXEL's Web site is very handy.  Complete copies
of the latest versions of the manuals and firmware are readily
available there.  Older versions of the firmware are generally
available on the FTP site.  In addition, technical support is readily
available via the net.  ZyXEL has sufficient ways to contact them that
someone should be able to get through to someone knowledgeable pretty
quickly.


DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

    There are few dislikes that I have with this product at all.
But as nothing is perfect, there are always some.

    o The User's Guide should be shipped with the modem.

    o Firmware updates should be available on the Internet in archive
      formats other than PkZip.

    o There ought to be a way to dump FAXes and/or stored voice messages
      in the modem's onboard DRAM to the host computer instead of just
      printing out the FAXes and playing back the voice messages.

    o A pass through printing option would be nice.  Would be very nice
      to hook a printer up to the modem and the modem to the host
      computer and still be able to print from computer to printer via
      way of the modem so one does not need a switch box or to constantly
      yank and reattach cables.


COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    I have used many different modems over the years.  However the
closest I have used to the ZyXEL Elite 2864 was my older ZyXEL
U-1496E.  This modem could handle 16.8 kbaud data rate transfers and
14.4 kbaud FAX capabilities.  It also supported voice features though
not as many options as the Elite 2864.  I was very pleased with my
U-1496E.  The main advantages of the Elite 2864 over the U-1496E are
full 28.8 kbaud V.34 communication options, stand alone (computerless)
options for FAX and Voice operations, and Flash EPROM updates.

    Other modems I have had experience with were generic 14.4
V.32b FAX/modems.  I was forced to use one of these when I
accidentally destroyed one of the EPROMs in my ZyXEL U-1496E.  I can
only say that it was a horrible experience.  The generic 14.4 modem
would drop line connections all the time as it lacked the advanced
retrain capabilities of the ZyXEL.


BUGS

    None discovered by myself, but each Flash EPROM update
includes a note file indicating improved or new features and usually a
long list of fixed bugs.  Most bugs are rather minor and would not be
noticed by most users.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    I have contacted the vendor a few times.  Once by phone.  The
lady I spoke to appeared to have a good data retrieval system at her
fingertips, finding information on my current hardware within a few
seconds.  In addition she seemed fairly knowledgeable about the
product.  I am sure she was not an engineer, but she knew enough to
answer most common problems which would be encountered by novice
users.

    I have also contacted a few of the ZyXEl people on the net via
email.  They are helpful, and appear to take suggestions rather
seriously.


WARRANTY

    The ZyXEL Elite 2864 is covered by a 5 year warranty from date
of purchase to the original, end user purchaser.  This warranty covers
defects, faulty workmanship, failure due to faulty materials and the
similar.  This warranty is valid only in the USA and Canada.


CONCLUSIONS

    This modem is a good investment.  It is easy to expand and has
enough capabilities to satisfy most power users.  It is slightly more
expensive than similar products by USRobotics.  But the upgradability
makes up for this.  My only real quips are the lack of direct support
for the Amiga, but this is no surprise.

    I give this product 4 stars out of 5.  Once a parallel port
driver becomes available on the Amiga, I might upgrade that to 5 out
of 5.


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    Copyright 1996 Wayne Rigby

---

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