Testing two dozen ISA and PCI modems

[@TheFakeVIP]

Wanted to drop by to say: 1. I watched this entire thing, from start to finish, in one sitting, when it came out. 2. Congrats on hitting 4 million total views recently (excluding the pre 2011 videos of course). 3. Been watching since I was no more than a kid interested in computers and electronics, having probably discovered your channel in about 2014. It was channels like yours, Uxwbill's and Vwestlife's that really enabled my already pre-existing love for all things with power going through them, and I can confidently say that I'm significantly better informed than I otherwise would be. Why would an 11 year old watch Saturday morning TV, when they could spend that time learning about how florescent lights work? 😂😄

[@renegonzalez6755]

So much nostalgia. My first computer was a hand me down Pentium 1 200Mhz PC with an ISA 28.8K modem with a loud internal speaker. When I upgraded to a Pentium 3 system on 2001 I purchased a Supra Max PCI 56K modem and it worked amazingly with the NetZero and Walmart's Blue Light dialup internet services. Where I live in West San Jose the maximum dialup connection was 52K vs. the ideal 56K. Good times. 😁

[@FeliciaByNature]

I've watched this twice now. I'm on my third replay. that's 12 hours of modem's screaming at me. I love it.

[@themaritimegirl]

@@FeliciaByNature That is wild 😅

[@ROMCat1952]

2:34:40 I've seen that on one modem in a Gateway system. You run an audio cable from the modem to a line-in connector on the sound card; modem sounds play thru the sound card speakers. The sound card in the Gateway had three line-in connectors IIRC, CD audio in, modem in, TV tuner in.

[@themaritimegirl]

Gateway eh? Maybe that's my ticket to finding a driver for this.

[@FeliciaByNature]

classic modem content makes me drool

[@nikosuoa]

Good times :)...

[@thegeforce6625]

low key inspiring me to get a ethernet to dialup adapter (or try out the phone jack on my ISP provided router) fantastic video! (also a nice potental ASMR video, as well as a video to try sleeping to XD)

[@themaritimegirl]

@@thegeforce6625 If you want one of these I'll send one to you; just say the word :)

[@arnlol]

I guess I just watched a 4 hours video about modems all the way through and enjoyed it eh. When I messed with a few modems I have a few years ago, I had one in a Windows 98 era laptop that would sometimes act like the ones at the end, getting stuck doing what I assume is the V.8 sound in a loop, I guess that laptop's modem must have had the same chip as those (or at least used the same driver). I never actually used dial-up as an actual internet access, when I finally got internet most people already had ADSL.

[@robobobbert]

I have so been looking forward to this one!

[@bradleyfield3944]

The internet sounded so much better back then.

[@vwestlife]

Maybe the Sportster card got zapped by lightning?

[@themaritimegirl]

@@vwestlife That's a reasonable possibility. I pulled the relays off it tonight and tested them both to be good, so I called it a loss and pulled the speaker off it to put in the smaller Sportster WinModem that has pads for a speaker but only has a buzzer instead. Interested to see if the speaker just drops in and works.

[@44CT232]

I'm not an expert on The NEC PC-9801 systems, but I did learn a bit from a late friend of mine who had a fascination with vintage Japanese computers. From my understanding, they were partially IBM compatible, but ran their own customized versions of DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95. I did not know about the backwards PCI slots though, so that's pretty interesting. Would definitely be pretty cool if that NEC modem is indeed from a PC-9801 machine.

[@gemedetvideo]

I have a couple of PC-98 systems including one with PCI. It uses standard PCI cards - it is just you sometimes need PC-98 specific PCI cards if the card uses an option ROM because IBM-compatible option ROMS won't work due to the different system architecture. So things like PCI sound cards work fine but things like PCI Video, or SCSI cards likely won't unless you use versions designed for the PC98. The card you showed definitely won't fit in any PC98 I have ever seen. The only real visible difference I can see between a PC98 PCI card and a regular IBM one is in the slot bracket. The shape of the PC98 bracket is slightly different but cards with IBM-compatible brackets still fit in a PC98 case. In fact I am using a 3com PCI ethernet card designed for IBM PCs in one of my PC98 systems right now.

[@themaritimegirl]

Someone in another comment says that is *is* for a PC-96 or PC-98 machine, but you and other say it isn't, so there's definitely some conflict here 🤔 I wonder if some systems had the backwards PCI slot and some had normal slots, like the website I read seemed to allude to?

[@gemedetvideo]

@@themaritimegirl Not likely. NEC did a lot of things with the PC-98 series but one thing they were consistent with was backward compatibility for both hardware and software. I am thinking the card may be from a PBX or something other than a PC. I know some NEC Univerge PBXs had an option to add modem cards. Perhaps it is one of them?

[@themaritimegirl]

Ohhh, that's a good possibility!

[@porcupinepunch6893]

Wow... I'm going to have to find some time for this one 😅

[@Madness832]

You're just shy of 4:20!😀🤣

[@HiragamaIkunai]

First card is a NEC pc 96-98 internal modem

[@greenmoose_]

Regarding your Sportster X2 issue, Don't quote me on this because I'm going on very vague memories - but the lead from the modem to the wall on USR modems was actually wired differently to any other modem and a lead from a Rockwell/Other based modem wouldn't work with a USR modem. Try it with the lead you've got on your Courier that works and see if it behaves more as expected. I suspect it might! I've not watched the whole video yet so I'm only an hour in and I dont know if you figured out whatever the issue is - but if not then this could be it! I remember being frustrated by such issues back when I used to run a BBS and mixed up my cables! EDIT: A program called Terminate was the terminal emulator I ended up using - I remember it being fully featured! This is a recommendation from 16 year old me though so I could be totally wrong 😂

[@themaritimegirl]

I did try the other telephone cord at first to see if it was a cord issue, but it didn't make a difference. A telephone cord can't really be "wired wrong" - there's only two wires - tip and ring. Tip and ring can be flipped around at one end, but most or all telephony equipment made since the 1980s is designed to handle the inverted polarity because it's common for houses to have tip and ring flipped around, because until touch-tone dialing came around in the 1960s, there was nothing in a telephone set that cared what polarity it was seeing.

[@braidenv]

I recently tried connecting to the 2600 network again and was unable to make a v92 connection using the WA number but was able using the toll free, so i don’t know if things have changed or I’m just getting weird luck being able to connect to certain numbers consistently over others.

[@themaritimegirl]

@@braidenv Could be day-to-day variations in either VoIP.ms's service or the 2600 network's VoIP provider. I find it can be a crapshoot how easy it will be to connect to on any given day.

[@MillAppartments-kb5vd]

I have a suspicion that modems would have worked much better (higher throughput) in their day if u-law **compander could be disabled in the pstn per call. 🇦🇺

[@miketel01]

can we have a vid of amps phones connected to your nor star system? I have a few gsm 900mhz phones connected to ccum.and a DMR repeater with telephone interconnect lol

[@themaritimegirl]

@@miketel01 There is no way to connect cellular phones to a Norstar system, or any key telephone system that I'm aware.

[@miketel01]

@ I was thinking open BTS with a sip trunk. Pipe that into asterisk then perhaps a BCM50 sip trunk into asterisk. Anthany P could likely make it work. Good road trip to Vermont

[@miketel01]

you didntshow us any crappy ibm m wave modems :(

[@themaritimegirl]

Because I don't own any.

[@miketel01]

@@themaritimegirl it’s for the best. I’d send you a couple, but you’d pull your hair out tryin to ge tit to work. Also we we need to wait until Canada post goes back to work