External 28.8 Bocamodem V34

Modems and More

This 28.8 external modem (modulator / demodulator) used to be a pretty penny, but now few people in North America use dial up modems. External modems like this Bocamodem were generally much more expensive than internal modems. This Bocamodem did 28.8 kb/s (28,000 bytes per second) and featured a 14,400 bps Group 3 Fax modem (you could send faxes out through it).

With the V.42/MNP5 data compression you could supposedly get 115.2kbs (115,200 bytes/sec). Almost all modems at this stage were "Hayes Compatible" and this Bocamodem was no exception. This particular modem came with an ISA card with a 16550 UART. To most this means nothing, but in the days of 386's many systems didn't come with a 16550 UART chip on the motherboard which meant you couldn't get speeds much faster than 2,400 bytes/sec.

This modem had a NVRAM (non-volatile RAM) that could store the modem configuration.

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