Some new additions to the modem teardown album:
US Robotics Courier 9600 HST connected
US Robotics Auto Dial 212A
- US Robotics Courier 9600 HST (manual, photos), “widebody” FCC ID CJE794FAST. This is similar to the 14400 HST I already have in the album, except this one takes 16 VAC power with a male DIN-5 plug. A PDF of the manual already is online at vtda.org, I wound up scanning my copy too for good measure.
- US Robotics Auto Dial 212A (manual, photos) – This one is pretty old, from 1982. It has the old USR logo and was the predecessor? to the USR Password modem recently featured by The Serial Port. Mine doesn’t power up and I’m still working on it, so I don’t yet have action shots. I acquired the manual for this one a while back and it’s on Internet Archive. Update: I got it working, see below
- Apple Modem 1200 (photos), this was around the Apple II era. It has some chips labeled with USR 82-83 copyrights. This has a DE-9 serial connector and I haven’t got around to trying it out.
- Cardinal V.34 with Voicemail (manual) – This is like the chonkier version of the Cardinal 28.8k I used to run with the ISP. The manual for it is up on Internet Archive.
- Practical Peripherals PM14400FXSA V.32 bis (photos) – The first Practical modem I’ve got my hands on. Other photos I’ve seen on eBay indicate it uses a 16 VAC barrel plug, when I tried a 9 VAC and 15 VAC, the unit powers up but makes very unhappy speaker noises when I try to call out.
USRSTATS with a 9600 HST connection
Most of these are VCF West finds, I’ve slowed down a bit because I have modems running out of my ears, but will still try to pick up 1994-ish modems to document.
Yes I’m still aware a Flickr album is a lousy way to curate this growing collection. I haven’t got around to vibe coding myself a database gallery yet.
Update: Nov 15: The USR Auto Dial 212 lives!
I think I finally concluded the $4 flea market 9 VAC transformer I have either has a short in the connector or the plug isn’t long enough to properly mate with jack on the modem. It takes a lot of careful fiddling to get it just right where it stays on. Originally I was afraid some component on the board was failing. I’ve ordered some new jacks to try making adapters sometime soon.
Anyways the modem seems to work just fine! The AT commands must be all uppercase to work, and other than S-registers there’s really not many commands. It’s basically, dial, hang up, answer, speaker on/off, and show response codes, that’s it. I made several calls to the BBS over my VoIP connections, about half were good, half were mangled from line noise. There’s some overrun issues with heavy ANSI screens but that feels more like a flow control issue on the BBS side than anything.
Action shot of the Auto Dial 212A dialed up to the BBS at 1200 bps
Testing the Auto Dial 212A
USRSTATS from the BBS
