Nezgar

I remember being so impressed with the reliability of HST. In the days of being a kid using the one phone line in the house, the parents would pick up the phone and get mad when they heard the modem in use on the line... if they did that on a 2400bps or lower modem you'd have a bunch of garbage on your screen until they hung up. With the courier HST, they could yell into the phone for a minute straight, and as soon as they stopped talking, the data flow would resume.. amazing!! Then I remember even so much as just quietly pick up the handset and replace while a v.32bis 14400 call was in place the call would usually drop. Agrivating! So I can totally see how HST, or Turbo-PEP would have been so appreciated on low-quality lines in europe. I remember the trade-in program when you could ship modems back to USR for a discount on the 28,800+ capable models, I think they said they send the old ones to Europe or even Africa where HST would reliably operate.

I think I used a Trailblazer once at a friends placed and was impressed with the true 19200 speed. (vs 16800 of USR's HST protocol). But mostly despised them because with my USR HST modem I could only connect to them at 2400bps with compression , which was the lowest common denominator for a long time before the v.32/bis standard became more affordable. Quick googling I found: v.32 (9600/4800) was ratified in 1984, but didn't take off due to price Courier HST released in 1986 provided 9600bps , de-facto standard for BBS's (also since USR gave sysops a discount) Telebit Trailblazer came out in 1985 - ~14400bps - popular in unix world due to native UUCP support, went faster to 19,200 at some point i think v.32 hayes smartmodem 9600 wasn't released until 1988 and was $1999 new! HST protocol was enhanced to 14,400bps in 1989 v.32bis (14,400) ratified in 1991 HST protocol enhanced to 16,800bps in 1992 And also at some point the USR modems that did v.32bis, could also do v.32terbo at 16,800 19,200, and if connecting to another USR v.32terbo capable modem, up to 21,600 Then the world converged when v.34 (28,800) and v.34bis (33,600) came out... then diverged with USR's x2 and Rockwells K56flex for 56K, then re-converged with v.90 and v.92

No speed boost. Same ol' 1.79Mhz. But potentially slightly faster RAMDisk performance using a linear ramdisk driver because the 65816 doesn't actually need to bank switch to access the extra memory like a standard 6502 ramdisk. OS flashing and switching by software is also 'faster' than making EPROMS and switching out ROM chips. Send a PM to Simius (originator of this thread) to inquire about availability.

Amazing to think all these would have been over $500 each new back in the day. The one on the left ran on my 8-bit BBS for many years.. 19200 with hardware flow control on the MIO, 16800 on the line, higher with compression...

Most of the fancy AT commands came later as additional speeds and protocols came along, after 300bps. There may be some basic s-registers available.. ie ats11=40 significantly speeds up the DTMF dial tones (40ms per tone) compared to most modems default of 70ms or more. I had quite complicated strings on the USR Courier modems to enable/disable things like error correction, compression, connect speed reporting, changing the escape sequence character (defaults to +++, I would change to @@@).. hmm what else, hardware or xon/xoff flow control, auto answer, etc. I'd be curious tom look at the Hayes smartmodem 300 manual, because it was 'the first' that all other smart modems basically modelled their command set after for compatibility...

Don't forget to turn off shields.

Hold option do disable basic, as well as 'start' to engage the tape loader. When you hear the beep, press play on the 1010, and then return on the computer. Then come back in 20 minutes

Correct... i accidentally received one without the latest update apparently. Still waiting for USB Blaster coming on the slow boat from China to update it. I would hope if you ordered one that this would be addressed before sending. Can't hurt to mention it i guess when ordering

Does it lock up at the point of asking, or after you actually enter a file name and it is initiating some I/O? If the latter, maybe its SIO speed related. SpartaDOS will keep trying to engage ultraspeed, maybe the emulator is not dealing with that well. Maybe tweaking some SIO speed enhancement type settings will help...

Hah, for the XEGS "And if the serious gamer wants to play disk based software, an XE disk drive is available separately." while showing a disk of Star Raiders II.. no drive! And they called Bug Hunt "Blast Em"

My fave (nice case) http://www.lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=98 wasn't there something in the 850 handler code that it would load automatically if there was no drive attached? Not that it would any use at that point, as you would still have to write something in BASIC to send/receive serial data or load a terminal program from tape...

Based on power consumption, looks like you have a Tandon mech 1050

Did some quick tests on my 1050's. WST Happy, Tandon Happy, and Tandon USDoubler The biggest thing was that all tests would measure higher consumption initially when the drive was cold, then slowly drop down and settle after about 10 mins.. I found my WST/Hong Kong Mech takes about 5W less power compared to a Tandon/Singapore mech when the disk is spinning. Seems the WST 1050 is comparable to your Indus GT, except writes less than the indus. WST Happy 1050 1.5W OFF 13.5W Idle 25W Spinning 26.1W Format Single Density forward, 25.1w Format back (happy formats track 0-39, then does verify 39-0, stock and most other 1050 mods do format-verify of each track 0-39) 25.7W Format Double Density forward, 24.8w Format back - this was done a few minutes later, probably just due to drive warmed up more than SD format 24.5W RWTEST Single Density 24.5W RWTEST Double Density 13.1w Continuous Double Density Sector Read. used spartaDOS 3 RPM utility - (Interesting since Happy has a track buffer, this makes continuous I/O without the drive spinning) Tandon Happy 1050 14.5W IDLE 30.2W Reading DD Disk. after warmed up dropped to 29.2W 31.1W Format DD Disk Fwd, 29.9W format back 29.7W RWTEST Write 29.2W RWTEST Read USDoubler Tandon 1050 14.0W Idle 30.3W DD Read - 29.6W after warmup 31W Format Double Density 29.7W Write Double Density 29.7W Read Double Density my primary 130XE with 320K RAM, Brown XL style PSU CO61982 1.2W Computer DISconnected 1.4W Computer Connected, OFF (I have some OS Select LED's) 13.0W Computer ON, SIDE2 SDX. Idle vs Running applications and SI2 made no difference in consumption 12.1W Computer ON, no cart 13.0W Ultimate Cartridge Stock 800XL 12.2W SIDE2 SDX 11.4W No Cartridge 12.5W Ultimate Cartridge 11.8W Kaboom! Game Cartridge Cheers

Looks like its an intelligent controller... would require a circuit to decode the data stream coming from the controller if you want to use it unmodified. I guess another way would be to crack it open, and solder the wires from a DB9 connector directly to one of the fire buttons, and the 4 digital directional buttons. All the rest of the controls would be non-functional.

Thats the one! You knew it was working because you could see the RTS/CTS lights on the modem toggling off and on, especially on outbound data. This was very important on my BBS with the MIO. if someone connected at 2400bps for instance, I would still be talking to the modem at 19,200, so obviously the modem needed a way to tell the computer when to pause sending, and when to resume.

Ironically, you may find that a faster modem works better on these digital voip lines. v.32bis (14400bps) and v.34 (28800+bps) protocols can be directly emulated by the cable/voip providers terminal adapters, so only the data is transferred over their private IP network, and the analog 'modulation' is only between your modem and the terminal adapter. they also support the fax protocols, hence why people note fax works ok. I guess the cable/voip providers didn't see value in having their adapters emulate the older uncommonly used protocols anymore. So basically, I expect best results would be had using a 14.4-56k modem on an 850 or PR connection (up to 9600bps even though modem may be connected at a faster rate) That said, I do have some extra external US Robotics Courier 56K v.Everything modems... used one of these on my 8-Bit BBS until I shut it down around 2003. Best modems ever made IMHO. If you're interested in one cheap, for say $10? plus shipping from Canada.

Comcast - cable provider right? If so, thy use a box to provide phone lines over cable... which is done over IP protocol... so it's not a 'real' analog circuit. The packetization introduces very small hiccups, pauses and delays that you may never hear for a voice call...

If the original owner had an 810 and a 1050, it might have been nice to alternate which one was drive 1 (the primary boot drive) and drive 2. Either to even out wear, or to make features like 1050 enhanced density available on the boot drive.

I don't know if it's already there, but if its not: pointer controller support for ST Mouse, CX-80 Trak-Ball, Atari Touch Tablet, KoalaPad. (since I have 1 of each haha) There's probably more I can't think of at the moment. Light pen? A basic drawing app would be a compliment to these.

Only when connected? Usually that's a sign of a noise on the line. Are you by chance running on a VOIP line? or maybe VOIP is being employed by your long distance provider, which might introduce noise, that may be more common and unavoidable these days. Unfortunately there's no built in hardware error correction in 1200bps modems...

I highly doubt the P:R: connection can do 19200 reliably, just like the 850. I don't have one anymore to confirm, but I vividly remember that being a big advantage when I got an MIO - it could do full 19200, and even added hardware flow control with the right handler.

Interesting! Sounds like the Indus GT is similarly inneficient as the 1050. It takes 9vac with a regulator to make 5vdc (making heat) and a voltage doubler to make 18vac, then a regulator to take it down to 12vdc (even more heat). Pretty inneficient, but I guess it allowed them to use a standard existing power supply. Just spinning a disk I noticed the 20-30 watt consumption in the 1050 - ill have to document thoroughly like you did since I do have a watts up meter. One more measurement you might want to try is a disk format, since erases take more power than writes.

Best has the cable listed for $12 here http://best-electronics-ca.com/modems.htm If I recall, the 850, PR connection, MIO etc serial ports used a non-standard pinout. (compared to IBM pc, atari st etc) I recall making my own cables referencing pinouts from product doumentation. Edit: maybe I'm thinking of the 15 pin parallel port.. the DB9's may be standard

Any difference in behavior on a different machine? Or with CF card removed or a different card? Tried with nothing connected to SIO?

My SIDE2 seemed to exhibit the same problem, until I determined the hole in the case for the switch wasn't quite big enough, and not allowing the switch to slide all the way down. A little enlargement of the bottom end of the hole with a fine drillbit solved my problem.