3 ms·

I like how BBS over modem and telnet on an ancient machine loads faster than like 50% of websites.

• HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  In a similar vein, years ago I designed a "digital extension cable" that communicated by modem. The point of the device was to replicate the state of 4 inputs at a water pump station to a remote monitoring site a few miles away. The box I built scanned the inputs about once per second, and if there was a state change, called the remote site over a leased phone line where an identical box had 4 outputs that replicated the state. It turned out to be much faster to make the call at 1,200 bps than at the 57.6kbps max speed of the modem. At the high baud rates, the time the modems took just to negotiate the connection and agree on a speed (about 5-10 seconds) was far longer than it took to transmit the few bytes of data at 1,200 bps and disconnect (well under 1 second). At 1200 bps, there was no negotiation: the communication is based on FSK at fixed frequencies. One of those weird things I mentally filed away a long time ago :-)