![\"My](\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/trs80modem-300x215.png\" "\\"trs80modem\\"")
My very first modem.<\/p><\/div>
\nConnecting to the ubiquitous Internet just isn’t a chore at all today. But take the Wambooli Wayback machine to 1984 and you’re in for a surprising adventure of online terror and surprise!
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\nModems weren’t that popular 25 years ago. Rarely did they come with your computer; almost always the modem as an afterthought purchase. I mean, who wanted one? What would you call?<\/p>\n
There were two types of modems: internal and external. I preferred the external because A) I could see the pretty lights, B) I could turn the thing off in times of woe, C) I could easily transfer it to a new computer, and D) it didn’t have the compatibility issues and conflicts of the internal modems.<\/p>\n
Back in those days, modems came with telecommunications, or “Comm,” software. That software wasn’t very friendly. That was because most computer users back then were nerds. We loved the challenge! But even friendly software didn’t skirt the issue of having to know the dreaded modem commands.<\/p>\n
O, I remember it well!<\/p>\n
Most modems (but not all) used the Hayes Smartmodem command set. After starting the Comm program, anything you typed in that program was received by the modem. Mostly, I started with the AT stands for Attention and it was the way you could confirm that your computer and the modem were on speaking terms with each other. It went like this:<\/p>\n You typed in AT and pressed the Enter key, the modem responded with OK. If it didn’t, the modem was either off, stubborn, or dead.<\/p>\n To dial the phone you used the After pressing Enter, you’d see the text Then you might see Yes, it was all text. All of it.<\/p>\n Hanging up the modem at the end of the call was accomplished in a number of ways. When I wrote communications programs, I’d simply drop the Data Terminal Ready (DTR) line on the serial port, which hung up most modems instantly. Most Comm programs did things that way.<\/p>\n You could also type the modem’s escape sequence, such as For external modems, you could always turn the dang thing off – another advantage to an external modem.<\/p>\n Finally, and most desperately, you could simply unplug the phone line.<\/p>\n Man! Those were the days!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Connecting to the ubiquitous Internet just isn’t a chore at all today. But take the Wambooli Wayback machine to 1984 and you’re in for a surprising adventure of online terror and surprise!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}AT<\/code> command.<\/p>\nAT
OK<\/code><\/p>\nATDT<\/code> command. DT stood for Dial Tone, as opposed to DP, Dial Pulse, for older non-touch tone phones. ATDT was followed by a phone number, as in:<\/p>\nATDT5551234<\/code><\/p>\nDialing<\/code> displayed, and then you’d hear the modem pick up the phone line. (Hopefully the modem had its own line.) Then you’d hear the number dial. Sometimes the numbers would appear as they were dialed:<\/p>\nDailing 5551234<\/code><\/p>\nRinging<\/code> or something. Eventually you’d see Connected<\/code> (hopefully) and you’d be online, chatting it up with another computer somewhere. At that point, all the text you’d see in the Comm program was coming from the other computer.<\/p>\n***<\/code> and then you’d see the OK<\/code> prompt. Typing ATH<\/code> would hang up the modem.<\/p>\n