Comments on: Circa 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Modem

By: Gary Cameron

Gary Cameron — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:03:14 +0000

Awesome demo. I have an old 300 baud acoustic coupler that has a white plastic case. I would love to see if I can use it to connect over my Vonage VOIP service.

By the way, that telephone you are using is way too new. Somewhere around here I have an old dial phone with 45 foot handset cord. It even has the special switch for use with a party line!

By: Anonymous Middle Aged Man

Anonymous Middle Aged Man — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:04:19 +0000

Another hit from wimp.com. Fantastic! My high school computer teacher used to whistle into the modem to get it print characters–all garbage–to the screen (a TV, of course). I wonder if anyone was ever a good enough whistler to write anything intelligible. Now that would be something. Thanks for posting this great vid.

By: Live Oak

Live Oak — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:52:37 +0000

Great! Just saw the video on wimp.com. I’m of the vintage where I’ve used a few acoustically coupled modems, all in molded plastic enclosures. To see one this old packaged in a fine wooden enclosure is a treat.

By: jqb

jqb — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:17:00 +0000

The first Acoustic Coupler was not built by Livermore until 1968, so this is no older than that. I used these before I had access to 1200 baud modems so I found this fairly ordinary and not worthy of all the “ooh aah”. The fact that you’re able to connect to the internet through it is quite plebian … it’s the remote computer that’s connected to the internet, and is simply exchanging text with your terminal via the phone line / coupler. I was present at UCLA when Charley Kline made the first network login, into the SRI node, via IMPs … now that was something to be excited about.

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:49:47 +0000

Brings back memories.. Tradewars 2k2, Solar Realms Elite, Legend of the red dragon, those were the best games “EVER”!

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By: Viktor767

Viktor767 — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:56:42 +0000

Senk767…

hithere…

By: Avto

Avto — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:27:09 +0000

Fantastic video! I want such box for my computer

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By: Karsten

Karsten — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:23:41 +0000

I loved the video! It brought back memories of my first self-made 300Baud acoustic coupler — unfortunately, we had birds in the living room, and whenever they opened their mouth, the connection would drop. So I had to wait until 1200 Baud became available, where the galvanic separation was done with a transformer, and not air and sound. Plus, 1200 was blazingly fast! You wouldn’t want to go back!