Wang 9648/24e fax modem
At last I finally got my hands on another modem I had as a teenager, a Wang 9648/24e. It’s an external 9600/4800 bps fax and V.22bis 2400 bps data modem. I’m not exactly sure why I bought this back then, because I already had a internal 2400 bps modem I got with a free Prodigy starter kit. I guess I just wanted the status LEDs to look cool or wanted faxing. It came out around 1992, and I purchased mine at Wal-mart for who knows how much money. After I started collecting 1990s modem I had to find another one to relive for the collection.
And boy does it disappoint! Apparently it’s so basic it doesn’t even do any kind of hardware MNP/V.42/V.42bis/LAPM error correction or data compression, I guess I completely forgot. It’s based on a bog standard Rockwell RC224ATF like virtually every other cheap modem out there, like the Viva 9600/2400 faxmodem which looks very similar. A datasheet I found for a different RC224ATLV variant leads me to believe it might support error correction in software via the Rockwell Protocol Interface (RPI) driver, but after trying it in Qmodem 4.6 Test Drive with RPI support turned on it didn’t seem to connect any differently. ATI3 only reports AFES-C2501-H0, there’s no -RPI- listed so maybe it doesn’t support it.
A side note, it’s interesting that Qmodem 4.6 Test Drive (compiled 1994) has Rockwell RPI support in it but Qmodem 5.0 (compiled 1992) doesn’t, and why was the test-drive newer?
RC224ATLV Rockwell Protocol Interface support
Modem board with Rockwell RC224ATF
The FCC ID JDJ-96424EFX leads back to a Nuvo Corporation, and the back of the PCB does say “NUVO 01-0063-52” so it’s not even a Wang design. This one didn’t come with a power adapter, looking at the board I didn’t see a bridge rectifier circuit so I assumed it was DC powered. It fired right up when I used a 9 VDC power adapter.
I don’t remember if the lack of error correction was a deal breaker as much as it was just being a sloooow 2400 bps. It’s probably no wonder why I justified saving up to buy a Zoom VFX 14.4k modem after it. The itch has been scratched and I feel shallow and empty again. The original one I had was relegated to doing credit card processing for the ISP as it was reliable and didn’t need anything faster than 1200 bps, so this one will likely be demoted to a box or a shelf somewhere.
Along the way I found this page talking about a Nuvo modem with RC224ATF and interestingly explains why the modem can do 9600 for fax and only 2400 for data (half-duplex and crosstalk).
