5 ms·
1983 Northern Telecom Commodore Phone
- classichasclass 3mo agoCommodore made all kinds of wacky stuff back in the day before they concentrated entirely on computers and peripherals. I have a Commodore AM radio and a couple of Commodore wristwatches, chickenhead logos and all, not to mention the calculators and typewriters which were their original bread and butter.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- _-_-__-_-_- 3mo agoThis website is so nerdy and so cool!
- userbinator 3mo agoTelco regulations were also why modems used an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler instead of being directly connected. As an aside, the em-dash density of this article is one of the highest I've ever seen.
- ttul 3mo agoMy first year English teacher would be impressed. The lack of em dash characters in a paper would get you a failing grade back in 1995.
- Stratoscope 3mo agoI love the em dash–and I didn't even notice them in this article.
- userbinator 3mo agoIt's not just the em-dash—it's the style of writing. The short paragraphs. The Consistent Titled Sections. Classic LLMese at its finest.
- Towaway69 3mo agoLLMs being based on probabilities and these are based on averages, hence whatever the LLM produces must be an average of what its been trained on. So doesn't the LLM just regurgitating the average writing style of the internet and isn't the author just an average writer and hence the em-dashes.
- IAmBroom 3mo agoThe average is not necessarily a highly populated bin. It may in fact be empty (bimodal distributions can have this).
- netsharc 3mo agoAnd the clanker doesn't even explain what changes for compatibility changes that Commodore and Bell agreed to and Bell didn't deliver... Such a horrible piece of writing.
- dokyun 3mo agoThere's only two in the whole article, what are you smoking?
- Towaway69 3mo agoWhat? A quick scan and I counted 10. There are two in the opening paragraph.
- jagged-chisel 3mo ago"This article" is the HN post, not the wiki article. Confusing pronoun reference.
- wolvoleo 3mo agoWe had similar idiotic regulations in Holland. Most people rented their phone though they did have a plug (albeit a special one we called the pigs nose). But in the 80s nobody gave a crap anymore and we just connected whatever we wanted. Aftermarket and technically illegal phones were sold everywhere.
- mattbaconz 3mo ago[dead]
- inigyou 3mo agoThat was a brilliant move by the telecom company to sell a huge batch of useless extra phones to poor suckers Commodore. They are useless because they're identical to the customer's own phone except for the fact they say Commodore.
- trembolram 3mo ago33 years later, Commodore releases a modern phone: The Commodore Callback Flip-Phone https://commodore.net/callback/ https://commodore.net/callback/
- st_goliath 3mo agoThey announced it, they haven't released anything yet. There is not a single real photograph of an actual device on the site. There's a wait list where you can sign up for eventual pre-orders, with an offer that they'll ask you for slightly less money. Also, it's not Commodore but someone playing "Weekend at Bernie's" with what's left of the brand. The real Commodore went through bankruptcy and liquidation in 1994.
- anonymousiam 3mo agoAround the same time, I purchased a Novation D-CAT which worked the same way as the one described (plugging in between the phone base and the handset). It was my first modem, and I primarily used it with my Lear Siegler ADM1A terminal (an upper case only terminal made entirely from discrete logic, and no internal CPU). The late 70's and early 80's was an era of rapid evolution in modem technology. Within a year or two I had purchased a Hayes Smartmodem 1200, and had that connected to one of my CP/M computers. I purchased several other modems over the years from US Robotics and Hayes. I think I purchased my last one in 1996, which was the year I got ISDN (2BRI). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novation_CAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novation_CAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lear_Siegler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lear_Siegler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_Microcomputer_Products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_Microcomputer_Products
- DennisL123 3mo agoNow, that’s a Commodore phone I can get behind.
- rob74 3mo ago> Elsewhere in the world, phones were modular. Handsets connected to their bases via small RJ-9 jacks, allowing devices like the VICModem to intercept the line between the handset and the base. Easy. But not in Canada. I would beg to differ. Maybe in some places in the world, but definitely not "everywhere else but in Canada". That's why the acoustic coupler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler) was invented: a device where you placed your phone's handset, so you could connect your computer to it without having to physically tamper with the phone company's sacred device.
- contingencies 3mo agoWait: wasn't it created because earlier telephones (before RJ socketed replaceable handsets) were by definition wacko analog things with rotary dial and no standardization of plugs, and therefore the only designed way to couple was mechanically? Touched a nerve: I had a 300baud acoustic coupled modem in mint condition original box which I bought from a garage sale in ~1995 and my flipping mother threw it out before Y2K. Man I was livid. Imagine what it'd be worth now.
- vessenes 3mo agoMuch less than the 2 shares of apple stock you could have bought :) I’d be upset too.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 3mo agoCouplers were necessitated because you weren't permitted to alter the wiring as it was all owned by the phone company. Prior to RJ you had screw terminals that could have been used for a modem if allowed.
- kalleboo 3mo agoWhat's seems (increasingly less) crazy these days is the Bell system even sued over the mechanical coupling of a little plastic cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_S...
- mindslight 3mo ago1. If Commodore could simply design and sell a piece of hardware that connects to the phone line, why couldn't the modem connect directly to the phone line? 2. Wouldn't the adapter be illegal under the same regulation? The phone remains physically connected to the network (there is a cable running to it), yet when the switch is flipped that phone is no longer functional! 3. Why did Commodore even need to ship a phone, rather than just the adapter? Squinting a bit I can see that perhaps there was some contracts behind these scenes between these two companies that let Commodore bend the rules as long as they were paying the bribe of buying a new phone, but it isn't explained at all.
- pseudohadamard 3mo agoOnly vaguely-related, but looking at the bilingual text on the Vicmodem box, what happened when Commodore sold their Pet computer in Quebec?