i am 70 years old living in England, a little behind the USA. i worked for 2 different time sharing companies that used modems like that. in 1973 that was a fast modem. the standard was 110 baud. Why don't you shut the lid? that keeps out noise in the room. thank you for posting that video. brings back memories, especially the 25 pin RS 232 connector, which in fact had only 3 useful pins 2,3 and 7, data in, data out and ground. for a terminal to modem connection pin 2 went to pin 2 and pin 3 went to pin 3 but for a terminal to computer connection they had to be crossed, pin 2 to pin 3 and pin 3 to pin 2. then there was a device called a null modem which crossed the wires for you. it was very expensive to purchase and very expensive to maintain and totally useless.
Can you imagine how exciting this must have been in 1965. And yes, I remember how exciting BBSs were on my C64. My dad was not so excited because the good ones were long distance.... Well done.
I honestly think watching the page load like that would have been such a cool experience back then. Now we take everything for granted. But how awesome was this demonstration. Thanks.
There's still a modern way to experience this! Fun fact, if you use any windows OS and select "Internet Explorer", you just might go slower than this modem, allowing you to savor it for longer.
No. It sucked having your nekkid pictures load from the top down, taking 5 mins per picture. So I would open like 15 pics at a time in separate windows, not tabs, and load them all at once, then look at them instead of waiting for each pic to load 😁 Or at least dial up loading sucked. Didn't realize this was different. It took a while to get there. It's basically the same except with a pic instead of text.
I'm surpreised how well it works, very slow of course, but you get there. Considering that computers seem outdated when they are like 3 years old, this is kinda amazing.
I don't know why, but seeing this seems even more futuristic than what we do now. You can actually see and hear what is going on when information is sent. Absolutely fascinating.
Excellent, I was using 300 baud modems to BBS in the 80's, and seeing this (being available in the 60's) just is amazing. I can remember the awe of connecting the first time, and I can just imagine what it must have been like in the 60's
I have one of these! It's almost identical, also in a nice wooden case, but mine has soft velvety lining inside the coupler compartment, almost certainly as soundproofing. It's been around a decade since I used it and longer since I opened it up, but if I remember correctly the modem circuitry is implemented as a bunch of small circuit boards on a simple backplane. I once wanted to plug it in, use PPP to dial up a local ISP and prank call their support line about ‘exceptionally slow speeds’ so I could honestly answer all their questions about what LEDs are on, etc. Unfortunately, I actually like support staff and I wouldn't want to subject them to something as horrible as this. ;)
This is so cool but so depressing at the same time. We take it for granted now, but technology has progressed far in these few decades. Puts things into perspective y'know?
When i got a 14.4k Modem 28.8k was only a month or two from stores, the amount of information transmitted by the 14.4k modem per second, was equivalent to a 747 loaded wall to wall with paper, double sided print, crashing into your house every second.
Side note: that modem went into a 486 Dx2-66mhz 256MB HD, 8-bit SB, 4MB RAM, and some shitty video card....But damn Doom and D2 were just right on that rig.
I don't know what I was thinking, but I was not expecting the phone to be physically placed on the modem... just, holy shit. this was the internet of the 60's.
Damn, it's as old as I am! XD The thing the handset sits in is called the cradle. I remember when they still made them with those. I had a 1200 baud modem that didn't even need an external power supply -- it was powered by the phone line. It also had an auto-answer feature. But it wasn't acoustic (no cradle). PS I wondered if this video had been around a while when I saw there was only 2+ million articles in the English Wikipedia. 2009 apparently.
Emperor of Cartoons yeah, I thought the one in the video seems really modern, 300 baud and RS232, but by the late 1980s you had faster speeds and modems which you plug straight to the telephone line.
Awesome to see functioning. I'm sure that was a few week of project. Thanks for sharing :-) To be honest I would have been happy to watch that video even if you failed to get it working, great piece of history
I was just explaining to a young friend (born in the mid 70s) what acoustic phone modems were, and how they worked. While this is a perfect example of what I was telling her about, I was picturing something around 15 years newer. I'll use this video to show her what I was taking about. Thanks for posting it.
Gotta be honest, phreakmonkey... Once I saw that the modem was working and connected to a server, my mind just kept saying "Play _Legend of the Red Dragon_!" It's the curse of growing up at a 90s kid with access to BBSes. Heh heh. But anyway, this is pretty fascinating! I knew about those analogue modems, but this is the first time I've ever seen one operate. Pretty interesting stuff! Thanks for sharing!
I actually used one of these (sans wooden case) at the University of Louisville in 1977. It claimed "50 Baud". I also used "Hollerith Cards" in a shoebox for programming. It really makes you appreciate broadband internet and 32GB thumb drives.
This sir, is the best piece of internet history I have ever seen! Even though I am young I still enjoy learning how internet started. I'm so used to have 70-100 Mbps internet connections! Lol thank you for sharing!
This is unbelievably cool. Helluva job getting this to work and finding the right tech. I had an email PDA with an acoustic coupler modem in 2000 and there is just somthing amazing about holding a phone to a modem and connecting to the net.
When you were hooking it up, I kept imagining how the thing might work. I didn't realize at all that you actually *plug* the phone handset itself into the top of the box. I was amazed :D Wonderful old piece of technology, thanks for sharing!
we have 150MBPS Internet, but my friend in Maryland, he still has dial up on a 2400 Baud, and playing games with him is NOT fun. (Takes him 2 days to download a 1GB game... also his ping is usually around 1100, 850 on a good day)
+JustNoah 2400 bps @ 8-N-1 = 1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit = 240 bytes per second. 1 GB = 1073741824 bytes / 240 per second = 4,473,924 seconds It would take your friend 51 days, 18 hours to download exactly 1 GB at 2400 baud, assuming no line noise and no protocol overhead whatsoever. Also, a 32 byte ping packet would take at best 1300 ms to transmit, and another 1300 ms to receive the reply from, so his "on a good day" ping time should be 2600 ms, again assuming no other protocol overhead (like DNS or PPP). I suspect your friend's dialup connection is probably 14.4kbps or something similar. 2400 baud wasn't really usable for TCP/IP networking links, which is why we didn't start using PPP / SLIP until we got to 9.6k. The overhead of the IP protocol alone would have saturated the lines. TMYK. ;) Aside: It would take 1 year, 49 days, 6 hours to transmit 1GB through this acoustic coupler - again, assuming no line noise and no protocol overhead. ;)
+phreakmonkey You're propably right. for some reason I thought it was 2400 baud. it is most likely 14.4K. which still, is not fit for data usage in this day and age.
fantastic! I grew up with digital modems and AT commands, I've never seen an analog acoustic coupler modem in use before. The simplicity of it is astounding.
It is incredible to me how much detail and effort was put into that device when now, a comparable device would be snapped into a plastic box or slot. More effort was placed on the case for that modem than would be used for the entire modern day product. Thanks for the view of a piece of early computer history.
Wow just wow... such a vintage piece of equipment can still to a degree integrate and communicate with tech in the 21st century. This technology was well before my experience with computers, esp. internet, which my family did not use until the mid 90's. We had 28.8kps speed at first with on a 586 platform machine. My first computer experiences were with dos c:\ prompt era... Awesome upload THNX!!!!!
The d-subminiature 'DB-25' connector was created by ITT 12 years earlier in 1952. The RS232 serial communication standard originally recommended, but did not require, the DB-25 connector. It was published in 1962, but had existed without being a written standard for a few years prior.
We had lives based around actual activities, friends we could see face to face, and we forged the way for people like to to scratch your ass and wonder how it was done.
As this was a rare luxury at the time, most people didn't think about it. Before the 1980s and the rise in home computing, I doubt most people had ever heard of a modem or computer connection of any type- and few outside a full-time computer lab would have seen one at work. Computers were huge standalone things made by IBM that filled massive labs, cost hundreds of thousands each and read instructions off tape. Connecting at home to access the Internet would have been the stuff of sci-fi. Up until 1979, a phone you carried around to make calls, or any home computer equipment beyond a basic games console for the very rich, was also science fiction.
I've received email from several people who said they used them as university students in the 1970s so they could submit programming "homework" to the central mainframe without driving to the campus. The school would own a number of them and let the students "check them out" for the weekend and such.
Very few people had modems due to the stranglehold the telephone companies had on the telephone system. Thanks to the Carterfone decision, the telephone network was opened up and allowed the internet to become what it is today. 😊😊👍
You made my day dude! Great presentation too. I used to work with an external 1200bps modem back in the 80's but nothing that compares with your stuff!
How can anyone NOT like this? This is freaking AWESOME, like an important puzzle of the interweb history! Thanks alot for sharing man, that was fucking awesome, i to be honest, ain't at the age to have had the possibility to see wikipedia load slower than on a 28.8K modem...but now i've seen it with a '64 baud...damn, that's fucking awesome.
THANK YOU! you may have a prototype, or a unit that was in short production run. so crude and nitty gritty yet so very very functional. I Am most impressed.
Dude, that's incredible! The concept behind the modem is very interesting, and simple actually...or maybe you just describe it well. Thank you very much for posting this!
It is amazing that vintage MODEM still actually works. Interesting video There are very few services that use dial up, but it is great to see the vintage Cold War era MODEM still work...
That's so cool to see a text-only browser in use with the Legacy hardware. I'm a youngin' who's into IT and love seeing stuff like this. That modem is a true work of art. Thanks for uploading!
In 1972 I saw a teletype machine at Sandia national lab from the late 50s that had an acoustic cup modem that ran at 110 baud. it was in an antique computing exhibit.
We've come a long ways since the old acoustic modems. My first modem was on my 1981 Commodore Vic-20 which was also 300 baud. Now I'm using 75Mbps cable modem. Thanks for sharing.
That is so awesome! Amazing that it still works after all this time... and that a modern webpage is still accessible through it! (well, sort of...) Thanks for filming this. It really is a neat piece of Internet history, and it's cool to see how it worked, and still does work.
I just found this video, I also have a model A. Mine is serial number 272, so just a bit older than the one you have/had. I saved it from being put in a dumpster at a university back in the 80s, and thought it was cool, and have been keeping it around since then. I have not tried to power it up. I found a couple Hayes external smartmodems at work yesterday and brought them home, and they are what made me curious about the old analog modem I had. Thanks for the video.
Great video, reminded me so much of my Hayes Smart Modem (1200 baud) back when I ran a BBS in the late 80's - brought back memories, thanks for sharing!
Unreal - using such a peice of Vintage Equipment,, slowest modem I ever used was a GVC -pocket~MiniModem (used a 9v battery) that ran@ 2400 -attached it to my Redhat 6.0 Linux Box - actually worked with an ISP called Localnet!!!!
OMG, that box is beautiful. I never would have imagined such a thing. Seems like it should be older. Thanks for sharing this. I had forgotten how I have enjoyed toying with old gear in the past.
@notrodash I used dial-up throughout modern times (1999 to 2007) before I switched to DSL. If you pick up the phone while the modem's live, you'll hear loud static, and if you make a noise into the mouthpiece, you're going to screw up the internet connection. Truly fascinating.
It amazes me to see how old the RS-232 standard is, regarding it is (and will be for a long time) so widely used. In Wikipedia it says it was first introduced in 62, just 2 years before this incredible piece of hardware.
great find and great demonstration. 20 years after that model a was manufactured, I connected to a bbs with my cutting edge Commodore VIC-20... at the same 300 baud.
It's nice to be old enough to look at a video like this and appreciate your computer roots. Kids these days don't know what it's like to surf the internet on 56k, much less 28800 baud, doesn't even come close to 300 baud. Cool video! Very interesting.
@Sleyah i think that the purpose of that is like the sound on the other end on the phone somehow synced to the modem connected it to the internet but there was no such thing as a modem in the 1960's unless it was invented in the goverment and somehow he got one
@phreakmonkey yeah, and also the issue is when saving / loading to and from tape, i can't have it do both, modems like to check to see if the message got through. i use a program called fldigi and use 8 bit rtty at 300 buad, possibly not the best mode, but it's no worse then the modem in this video because of the lack of overhead
@phreakmonkey In this case 300 baud is 300 bits per second, but technically, baud is signalling rate, not bit rate. If one signal can pack several bits, the bit rate is increased but the baud rate stays the same. For instance, if four tone levels were used, a single tone could signal two bits. The baud rate could stay at 300, but the bit rate would go up to 600 bits per second.
Oh my god, this is amazing! I was only born in 1995 but this brings a tear in my eye! It's amazing that you managed to make it work, modern technology being compatible with old technology is just... beautiful!
For those asking about the ISP or how he got the login password, he dialed a server at work that still responds with a dial up modem on that end taking calls. He can use this to log in to that server through the terminal. He is essentially using the terminal on the server remotely over this modem to use the server's internet connection.
I have here, next to my commodore, a 3-8200 GE 300 baud direct/acoustic modem aswell as the old phone for it, I've never bothered to try it out really, though I'd LOVE to give it a spin. I might give this a try now that you showed me the setup. Thanks for posting this.
That video is so AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!! It brought tears of nostalgia to my eyes and made me remember signing on to compuserve with my old VIC-20 to play black dragon...only after I got the phone companies permission to connect it to the line, which was a legal requirement back then.
11 years later...watched this video. Impressive!! I just visited the Computer Museum of America in Roswell, GA... and nothing there is powered on or functional. Nice to see something from this era actually working! Wish the could get one of those Cray's up and running.
I use to use a 1200 baud modem via packet radio in VHF. I love this kind of old computing, but you have an amazing thing there.. I want to know what's inside of that modem, and btw, it's amazing that it uses rs232 and not other propietary/standard. Also amazing is that the power supply is still working correctly (luckily didn't blow your laptop) and there is nothing damaged in the modem. I have a old 1980's KAM (look on google) which had many problems due to aging capacitors.. well, Congrats!
@tvfan1563 The connection speed is in bytes. A 300 baud connection will give you 300 bits per second, which is 37.5 bytes per second. (Since there are 8 bits to a byte)
I guess many think it is purely electrical just because the modem they had was connected with a wire directly to the phone outlet. But it is always modulated sound. Hence modem. Only when ADSL came about it changed from being modulated soundwaves to being more like radio frequencies transmitted over the phone copper.
This was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my time dealing with computers - I seriously wish this was shown to me when I had a networking class in 2009! :)
Great video! It's amazing how there were no errors on lynx session even though you were talking loudly. Also amazing that the DB25 plug lasted 3 decades! It might have a little trouble streaming RUclips at a third kilobyte per second though.
The funny thing is I have two of those adapters in the desk drawer next to me. My father started using this computer desk in the 80s (when those sorts of adapters were more common) and I took the desk for my own use when he died in 2000 and never cleaned the drawer out. But cool video. I love old tech like that.
8 bits and 300 baud felt like you were actually doing something. Even simple innocent connections felt naughty! :) That's a damn nice modem for an acoustic! I've got an old Atari 830 CAT style and if you cough it's spitting garble lol!
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Why hunt down one of these old modems when you can just have your connection throttled by Verizon?
Because this is way cooler.
Agreed, I actually often times come back to this. :)
Don't you mean AT&T
Or tmobile
Or Consolidated
i am 70 years old living in England, a little behind the USA. i worked for 2 different time sharing companies that used modems like that. in 1973 that was a fast modem. the standard was 110 baud. Why don't you shut the lid? that keeps out noise in the room. thank you for posting that video. brings back memories, especially the 25 pin RS 232 connector, which in fact had only 3 useful pins 2,3 and 7, data in, data out and ground.
for a terminal to modem connection pin 2 went to pin 2 and pin 3 went to pin 3 but for a terminal to computer connection they had to be crossed, pin 2 to pin 3 and pin 3 to pin 2.
then there was a device called a null modem which crossed the wires for you. it was very expensive to purchase and very expensive to maintain and totally useless.
Because He is faking the call, the answering modem was modern. Easy to hear
I can't imagine how awful it must be to not believe even obviously real things you see.
@@BurkenProductions You don’t know what you’re talking about.
@@BurkenProductions of course the answering modem was more modern. I don't understand your point
Can you imagine how exciting this must have been in 1965.
And yes, I remember how exciting BBSs were on my C64. My dad was not so excited because the good ones were long distance....
Well done.
BBS on atari back in 1987!
Only if you knew about the old days of telephone phreaking. For those wondering, the 8-bit guy has a video on it.
I honestly think watching the page load like that would have been such a cool experience back then.
Now we take everything for granted. But how awesome was this demonstration. Thanks.
Awesome visual demonstration of a handshake:
i.imgur.com/5Dq6K2U.png
That is legit, at-least its portable.
I
There's still a modern way to experience this! Fun fact, if you use any windows OS and select "Internet Explorer", you just might go slower than this modem, allowing you to savor it for longer.
No. It sucked having your nekkid pictures load from the top down, taking 5 mins per picture. So I would open like 15 pics at a time in separate windows, not tabs, and load them all at once, then look at them instead of waiting for each pic to load 😁
Or at least dial up loading sucked. Didn't realize this was different. It took a while to get there. It's basically the same except with a pic instead of text.
I'm surpreised how well it works, very slow of course, but you get there. Considering that computers seem outdated when they are like 3 years old, this is kinda amazing.
"Oh yeah baby we're blazing now." That was hilarious.
Cheers!
I don't know why, but seeing this seems even more futuristic than what we do now. You can actually see and hear what is going on when information is sent. Absolutely fascinating.
Excellent, I was using 300 baud modems to BBS in the 80's, and seeing this (being available in the 60's) just is amazing. I can remember the awe of connecting the first time, and I can just imagine what it must have been like in the 60's
That was kickass, dude. Three cheers for getting it to work.
I miss the era when electronics came in wood.
this has inspired me i want to make a box like this but for our modern day modem/router
so, back then computers literally talked to each other
amnottabs more like screaming....
amnottabs nowadays the Modems do the talking.. like... quietly.
Actually, it's very loud. However the signals are such a high frequency we can not hear them.
Dennis Woycheshen fiber modems are silent
dennis we cant hear it because they don't have speakers
broadband is actually audible to humans
I have one of these! It's almost identical, also in a nice wooden case, but mine has soft velvety lining inside the coupler compartment, almost certainly as soundproofing. It's been around a decade since I used it and longer since I opened it up, but if I remember correctly the modem circuitry is implemented as a bunch of small circuit boards on a simple backplane.
I once wanted to plug it in, use PPP to dial up a local ISP and prank call their support line about ‘exceptionally slow speeds’ so I could honestly answer all their questions about what LEDs are on, etc. Unfortunately, I actually like support staff and I wouldn't want to subject them to something as horrible as this. ;)
its like you went back in time to browse the future
:D
thanks for uploading this video, it's hilarious to see this '64 modem still working in 2014. (50 years old!!)
That'll come in handy after the apocalypse.
You'll use it to organise the resistance against the robots...
Yeah...
That was wonderful! Things like these are nice reminders for how good human creativity is. Love it
I would love to see that thing play CS:S.
"HOLY SHIT THAT GUY HAS A PING OF OVER 9 MILLION!"
Now this video itself is an antique
🤣 It is, and I still have the thing! And it still works!
@@phreakmonkeyi’d totally buy it
This is so cool but so depressing at the same time.
We take it for granted now, but technology has progressed far in these few decades. Puts things into perspective y'know?
When i got a 14.4k Modem 28.8k was only a month or two from stores, the amount of information transmitted by the 14.4k modem per second, was equivalent to a 747 loaded wall to wall with paper, double sided print, crashing into your house every second.
Side note: that modem went into a 486 Dx2-66mhz 256MB HD, 8-bit SB, 4MB RAM, and some shitty video card....But damn Doom and D2 were just right on that rig.
I don't know what I was thinking, but I was not expecting the phone to be physically placed on the modem... just, holy shit. this was the internet of the 60's.
Damn, it's as old as I am! XD The thing the handset sits in is called the cradle. I remember when they still made them with those.
I had a 1200 baud modem that didn't even need an external power supply -- it was powered by the phone line. It also had an auto-answer feature. But it wasn't acoustic (no cradle).
PS I wondered if this video had been around a while when I saw there was only 2+ million articles in the English Wikipedia. 2009 apparently.
Emperor of Cartoons yeah, I thought the one in the video seems really modern, 300 baud and RS232, but by the late 1980s you had faster speeds and modems which you plug straight to the telephone line.
Are you a furry?
Prismic Kyubey Which one of us?
Makes my first PCI fax modem look like a space age thing.
I'm an IT Techie from the turn of the century, and an antique freak; this -indeed- makes me want to cry!
Thanks a bunch for sharing :-)
Oh my god my southern accent in 2009 was so cute. :-P
Awesome demonstration, thanks for putting this up! Makes me realize how spoiled I was with 2400 baud back in the day.
Awesome to see functioning. I'm sure that was a few week of project. Thanks for sharing :-)
To be honest I would have been happy to watch that video even if you failed to get it working, great piece of history
This is great, absolutely fantastic! The craftsmanship of the wooden box (and I'm sure the circuit design itself) is beautiful!
"SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?"
Ry666 Lets play thermonuclear war.
Ry666 The only way to win is to not play at all.
Greetings, professor falken.
I love the way that you can see lynx redrawing the screen, rather than things updating instantly.
I had no idea that modems were even a spark of thought in the early 60s! Weird!
The first, 110 baud, hit the market in 58.
I was just explaining to a young friend (born in the mid 70s) what acoustic phone modems were, and how they worked.
While this is a perfect example of what I was telling her about, I was picturing something around 15 years newer.
I'll use this video to show her what I was taking about. Thanks for posting it.
Gotta be honest, phreakmonkey... Once I saw that the modem was working and connected to a server, my mind just kept saying "Play _Legend of the Red Dragon_!" It's the curse of growing up at a 90s kid with access to BBSes. Heh heh.
But anyway, this is pretty fascinating! I knew about those analogue modems, but this is the first time I've ever seen one operate. Pretty interesting stuff! Thanks for sharing!
I actually used one of these (sans wooden case) at the University of Louisville in 1977. It claimed "50 Baud". I also used "Hollerith Cards" in a shoebox for programming. It really makes you appreciate broadband internet and 32GB thumb drives.
Where did you find that thing?
Oh fu##
This is one of the most awesome things i have ever seen! Thanks for uploading this video! It was awesome to see the ancient internet!
FAQ: www.phreakmonkey.com/2009/05/1964-livermore-data-systems-model-modem_31.html
This sir, is the best piece of internet history I have ever seen! Even though I am young I still enjoy learning how internet started. I'm so used to have 70-100 Mbps internet connections! Lol thank you for sharing!
Still better than my shit tier Verizon modem.
That laptop is better than my gaming pc
This is unbelievably cool. Helluva job getting this to work and finding the right tech. I had an email PDA with an acoustic coupler modem in 2000 and there is just somthing amazing about holding a phone to a modem and connecting to the net.
Be happy, at least that modem will get you better netflix performance than on my verizon fios connection :)
When you were hooking it up, I kept imagining how the thing might work. I didn't realize at all that you actually *plug* the phone handset itself into the top of the box. I was amazed :D
Wonderful old piece of technology, thanks for sharing!
we have 150MBPS Internet, but my friend in Maryland, he still has dial up on a 2400 Baud, and playing games with him is NOT fun. (Takes him 2 days to download a 1GB game... also his ping is usually around 1100, 850 on a good day)
+JustNoah
2400 bps @ 8-N-1 = 1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit = 240 bytes per second.
1 GB = 1073741824 bytes / 240 per second = 4,473,924 seconds
It would take your friend 51 days, 18 hours to download exactly 1 GB at 2400 baud, assuming no line noise and no protocol overhead whatsoever.
Also, a 32 byte ping packet would take at best 1300 ms to transmit, and another 1300 ms to receive the reply from, so his "on a good day" ping time should be 2600 ms, again assuming no other protocol overhead (like DNS or PPP).
I suspect your friend's dialup connection is probably 14.4kbps or something similar. 2400 baud wasn't really usable for TCP/IP networking links, which is why we didn't start using PPP / SLIP until we got to 9.6k. The overhead of the IP protocol alone would have saturated the lines.
TMYK. ;)
Aside: It would take 1 year, 49 days, 6 hours to transmit 1GB through this acoustic coupler - again, assuming no line noise and no protocol overhead. ;)
+phreakmonkey You're propably right. for some reason I thought it was 2400 baud. it is most likely 14.4K. which still, is not fit for data usage in this day and age.
+JustNoah Im pretty sure you meant 150Mbps not 150MBps. Thats a huge difference ;)
+JustNoah How is that even possible.
Your friend does not live in a first world country.
(no America is not a first world country)
TheAGCteam Well his family had the same internet since 1996 and had not since upgraded. He recently got the "HUGE" Upgrade to 2MBPS.
fantastic! I grew up with digital modems and AT commands, I've never seen an analog acoustic coupler modem in use before. The simplicity of it is astounding.
Greetings Professor Falken.
Want to play a good game of chess?
How about global thermonuclear war?
Protovision
It is incredible to me how much detail and effort was put into that device when now, a comparable device would be snapped into a plastic box or slot. More effort was placed on the case for that modem than would be used for the entire modern day product. Thanks for the view of a piece of early computer history.
Does this thing make Charlie bit my finger go black and white?
+Zak farley NO HTML5
+Zak farley There's no HTML5, so that means it can't do videos or pictures.
@@kiernanhowell-mackinley1733 were you people born in 2015?
How do you think RUclips played videos by default before "HTML5" was invented?
Wow just wow... such a vintage piece of equipment can still to a degree integrate and communicate with tech in the 21st century. This technology was well before my experience with computers, esp. internet, which my family did not use until the mid 90's. We had 28.8kps speed at first with on a 586 platform machine. My first computer experiences were with dos c:\ prompt era... Awesome upload THNX!!!!!
And its still faster than most isp' are now lol
The d-subminiature 'DB-25' connector was created by ITT 12 years earlier in 1952. The RS232 serial communication standard originally recommended, but did not require, the DB-25 connector. It was published in 1962, but had existed without being a written standard for a few years prior.
How did people live back in the day when they had to do this?
Welcome to the 60s, where your CPUs didn't even reach 10 KHz.
We had lives based around actual activities, friends we could see face to face, and we forged the way for people like to to scratch your ass and wonder how it was done.
Wesley Wilkinson psssssst..... feel the burn from the 1960s.
As this was a rare luxury at the time, most people didn't think about it. Before the 1980s and the rise in home computing, I doubt most people had ever heard of a modem or computer connection of any type- and few outside a full-time computer lab would have seen one at work. Computers were huge standalone things made by IBM that filled massive labs, cost hundreds of thousands each and read instructions off tape. Connecting at home to access the Internet would have been the stuff of sci-fi. Up until 1979, a phone you carried around to make calls, or any home computer equipment beyond a basic games console for the very rich, was also science fiction.
Completely awesome, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this.
Who actually had these in the 1960s??
Damn near everybody with a computer.
destrierofdark So I guess you mean people at NASA.
And, actually, a boatload of larger corporations who had business stuff to do.
I've received email from several people who said they used them as university students in the 1970s so they could submit programming "homework" to the central mainframe without driving to the campus. The school would own a number of them and let the students "check them out" for the weekend and such.
Very few people had modems due to the stranglehold the telephone companies had on the telephone system. Thanks to the Carterfone decision, the telephone network was opened up and allowed the internet to become what it is today. 😊😊👍
You made my day dude! Great presentation too. I used to work with an external 1200bps modem back in the 80's but nothing that compares with your stuff!
Me before I was popular...
How can anyone NOT like this?
This is freaking AWESOME, like an important puzzle of the interweb history!
Thanks alot for sharing man, that was fucking awesome, i to be honest, ain't at the age to have had the possibility to see wikipedia load slower than on a 28.8K modem...but now i've seen it with a '64 baud...damn, that's fucking awesome.
Love the workmanship on that! And that you can operate it and demonstrate it working. Top notch.
kind of amazing that even after 50 years it can still esentially function the way its supposed to given the proper set up
THANK YOU! you may have a prototype, or a unit that was in short production run. so crude and nitty gritty yet so very very functional. I Am most impressed.
Dude, that's incredible! The concept behind the modem is very interesting, and simple actually...or maybe you just describe it well. Thank you very much for posting this!
It is amazing that vintage MODEM still actually works. Interesting video There are very few services that use dial up, but it is great to see the vintage Cold War era MODEM still work...
Incredible. Thank you sir, coolest thing I have seen in a year.
That's so cool to see a text-only browser in use with the Legacy hardware. I'm a youngin' who's into IT and love seeing stuff like this. That modem is a true work of art. Thanks for uploading!
In 1972 I saw a teletype machine at Sandia national lab from the late 50s that had an acoustic cup modem that ran at 110 baud. it was in an antique computing exhibit.
We've come a long ways since the old acoustic modems. My first modem was on my 1981 Commodore Vic-20 which was also 300 baud. Now I'm using 75Mbps cable modem. Thanks for sharing.
Fantastic video. Hardware design has come a long way.
That was an awesome demo ... and compliments to the technical knowledge needed to pull this off.
That is so awesome! Amazing that it still works after all this time... and that a modern webpage is still accessible through it! (well, sort of...)
Thanks for filming this. It really is a neat piece of Internet history, and it's cool to see how it worked, and still does work.
I just found this video, I also have a model A. Mine is serial number 272, so just a bit older than the one you have/had. I saved it from being put in a dumpster at a university back in the 80s, and thought it was cool, and have been keeping it around since then. I have not tried to power it up. I found a couple Hayes external smartmodems at work yesterday and brought them home, and they are what made me curious about the old analog modem I had. Thanks for the video.
Great video, reminded me so much of my Hayes Smart Modem (1200 baud) back when I ran a BBS in the late 80's - brought back memories, thanks for sharing!
Unreal - using such a peice of Vintage Equipment,, slowest modem I ever used was a GVC -pocket~MiniModem (used a 9v battery) that ran@ 2400 -attached it to my Redhat 6.0 Linux Box - actually worked with an ISP called Localnet!!!!
OMG, that box is beautiful. I never would have imagined such a thing. Seems like it should be older. Thanks for sharing this. I had forgotten how I have enjoyed toying with old gear in the past.
That thing is a piece of art in its own right, its beautiful. love old tech and how they got things like this to function.
@notrodash I used dial-up throughout modern times (1999 to 2007) before I switched to DSL. If you pick up the phone while the modem's live, you'll hear loud static, and if you make a noise into the mouthpiece, you're going to screw up the internet connection. Truly fascinating.
Man, what a fantastic piece of hardware you have there! I am a bit embarrassed that I had no idea there WERE modems in the 1960s until just now~!
It amazes me to see how old the RS-232 standard is, regarding it is (and will be for a long time) so widely used. In Wikipedia it says it was first introduced in 62, just 2 years before this incredible piece of hardware.
great find and great demonstration. 20 years after that model a was manufactured, I connected to a bbs with my cutting edge Commodore VIC-20... at the same 300 baud.
i recently restored a commodore VIC-20 with a 300 baud modem!
It's nice to be old enough to look at a video like this and appreciate your computer roots. Kids these days don't know what it's like to surf the internet on 56k, much less 28800 baud, doesn't even come close to 300 baud. Cool video! Very interesting.
My first modem was a 1992 Everex 1200 baud ISA modem. I still remember those sweet first connections
@Sleyah i think that the purpose of that is like the sound on the other end on the phone somehow synced to the modem connected it to the internet but there was no such thing as a modem in the 1960's unless it was invented in the goverment and somehow he got one
@phreakmonkey yeah, and also the issue is when saving / loading to and from tape, i can't have it do both, modems like to check to see if the message got through. i use a program called fldigi and use 8 bit rtty at 300 buad, possibly not the best mode, but it's no worse then the modem in this video because of the lack of overhead
@phreakmonkey In this case 300 baud is 300 bits per second, but technically, baud is signalling rate, not bit rate. If one signal can pack several bits, the bit rate is increased but the baud rate stays the same. For instance, if four tone levels were used, a single tone could signal two bits. The baud rate could stay at 300, but the bit rate would go up to 600 bits per second.
Oh my god, this is amazing!
I was only born in 1995 but this brings a tear in my eye!
It's amazing that you managed to make it work, modern technology being compatible with old technology is just... beautiful!
Sure, but not something desirable.
For those asking about the ISP or how he got the login password, he dialed a server at work that still responds with a dial up modem on that end taking calls. He can use this to log in to that server through the terminal. He is essentially using the terminal on the server remotely over this modem to use the server's internet connection.
Thanks for sharing - always great to see solid technology work even today!
I have here, next to my commodore, a 3-8200 GE 300 baud direct/acoustic modem aswell as the old phone for it, I've never bothered to try it out really, though I'd LOVE to give it a spin. I might give this a try now that you showed me the setup. Thanks for posting this.
Wow, truly some classic computer history right there. Thanks for making and posting this.
That was great! Thanks for taking the time to get it running and share it.
That's awesome, been a long time since I've seen anyone use an acoustic coupler, let alone one from the sixties. Great post, thanks for the memories.
That video is so AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!! It brought tears of nostalgia to my eyes and made me remember signing on to compuserve with my old VIC-20 to play black dragon...only after I got the phone companies permission to connect it to the line, which was a legal requirement back then.
11 years later...watched this video. Impressive!! I just visited the Computer Museum of America in Roswell, GA... and nothing there is powered on or functional. Nice to see something from this era actually working! Wish the could get one of those Cray's up and running.
I use to use a 1200 baud modem via packet radio in VHF. I love this kind of old computing, but you have an amazing thing there.. I want to know what's inside of that modem, and btw, it's amazing that it uses rs232 and not other propietary/standard. Also amazing is that the power supply is still working correctly (luckily didn't blow your laptop) and there is nothing damaged in the modem. I have a old 1980's KAM (look on google) which had many problems due to aging capacitors.. well, Congrats!
@tvfan1563 The connection speed is in bytes. A 300 baud connection will give you 300 bits per second, which is 37.5 bytes per second. (Since there are 8 bits to a byte)
I guess many think it is purely electrical just because the modem they had was connected with a wire directly to the phone outlet. But it is always modulated sound. Hence modem. Only when ADSL came about it changed from being modulated soundwaves to being more like radio frequencies transmitted over the phone copper.
thanks for sharing this, pretty sweet to see (again) where we started
This was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my time dealing with computers - I seriously wish this was shown to me when I had a networking class in 2009! :)
pretty much the coolest thing i've seen all day. That modem is as old as my dad!
Great video! It's amazing how there were no errors on lynx session even though you were talking loudly. Also amazing that the DB25 plug lasted 3 decades! It might have a little trouble streaming RUclips at a third kilobyte per second though.
Cool. The oldest modem I ever used was a Novation CAT 300 baud accoustic coupler modem back in the day. It worked similarly to this one.
i think it's cool that you can still find a way to connect this thing to your pc.
The funny thing is I have two of those adapters in the desk drawer next to me. My father started using this computer desk in the 80s (when those sorts of adapters were more common) and I took the desk for my own use when he died in 2000 and never cleaned the drawer out.
But cool video. I love old tech like that.
Good Stuff Man! This takes me back to when I use to run BBS on my Commodore!
8 bits and 300 baud felt like you were actually doing something. Even simple innocent connections felt naughty! :)
That's a damn nice modem for an acoustic! I've got an old Atari 830 CAT style and if you cough it's spitting garble lol!