On the net with a 1964 acoustic modem…

On the net with a 1964 acoustic 300 baud modem…

This modem was given to me ~1989 by the widow of a retired (IBM?) engineer. Computerhistory.org has a Model B dated 1965, and I’ve seen a ~1967 Model C written up in a magazine. (Interestingly, incorrectly identified as being only 110 baud.)

Even better than seeing it in a museum, I decide to hook the trusty Model A up and make it talk to something. After some trial and error, I manage to get it to talk to a terminal server at work and use it to connect to a linux box. It’s ALIVE! So, 45 years after it’s creation, this antique modem gets to send data to and from the modern Internet.

As modern ISPs freak out about our data usage they’ll likely start issuing these to all of us.


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3 Comments

  1. Beautiful hardware, fun video.

  2. Beautiful hardware, fun video.

  3. Nice. As a child, I narrowly avoided buying an Atari 830 acoustic modem, opting for the Atari 835.. cutting-edge “direct connect” (no acoustic cups and 300 baud!)… awesome for 1984!

    No Internets back then, but you could surf the world of BBS’s and Compuserve, Delphi, Games People Play (which I think became AOL), etc. Said surfing could be done for free if you ran a little program overnight.

    Ah, now I am nostalgic for the old 8-bit systems, and interfacing common Arduino shields to them. 🙂

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