Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 22, 2004 03:44 PM
win-modems have no proper place in a modern computer.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...
For all of the 8-bucks of investment that these pieces of garbage represent, they are best removed from any desktop system and discarded.
I couldn't disagree more. The basic idea of a "winmodem" is to save hardware cost by not putting processing power into the modem, where it is completely wasted for the 99% of the time that the modem is not in use. 20 years ago, there was no choice: desktop computers weren't powerful enough to do the processing that a modem needs, while doing something else at the same time. So modem makers had to put processing power into the modems.
Today, desktop CPUs are at least 100 times as fast as desktop CPUs back then. So the desktop CPU can handle the modem processing without noticeable inpact on whatever else it's doing. The main CPU is where the processing power should be, because when the modem isn't in use, you get to use it for applications.
The situation is a little similar to that of printers in the mid-1980s. There was a lot of hoopla about how great PostScript printers were. You sometimes saw the ridiculous situation of a 640k, 10-MHz computer connected to a PostScript printer containing more memory and a faster processor. Which was, of course, idle for most of the time, while the poor user, with his underpowered CPU, was waiting for his document to repaginate.
The place for computing power is where you mostly use it - your main CPU - not in your printer, modem, etc. They should be dumb, simple, cheap devices.
Of course, the full specification of how to control them should be available without conditions to anyone who buys one. I think that has been the real problem with winmodems in the past - the obstacles placed by Microsoft in the way of anyone who wished to write open drivers for them. That is a legal issue which should have been addressed in the Microsoft antitrust case. But from a technical standpoint, the simple-hardware concept behind the winmodem is the correct approach.
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Re:winmodems?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 22, 2004 03:44 PMFor all of the 8-bucks of investment that these pieces of garbage represent, they are best removed from any desktop system and discarded.
I couldn't disagree more. The basic idea of a "winmodem" is to save hardware cost by not putting processing power into the modem, where it is completely wasted for the 99% of the time that the modem is not in use. 20 years ago, there was no choice: desktop computers weren't powerful enough to do the processing that a modem needs, while doing something else at the same time. So modem makers had to put processing power into the modems.
Today, desktop CPUs are at least 100 times as fast as desktop CPUs back then. So the desktop CPU can handle the modem processing without noticeable inpact on whatever else it's doing. The main CPU is where the processing power should be, because when the modem isn't in use, you get to use it for applications.
The situation is a little similar to that of printers in the mid-1980s. There was a lot of hoopla about how great PostScript printers were. You sometimes saw the ridiculous situation of a 640k, 10-MHz computer connected to a PostScript printer containing more memory and a faster processor. Which was, of course, idle for most of the time, while the poor user, with his underpowered CPU, was waiting for his document to repaginate.
The place for computing power is where you mostly use it - your main CPU - not in your printer, modem, etc. They should be dumb, simple, cheap devices.
Of course, the full specification of how to control them should be available without conditions to anyone who buys one. I think that has been the real problem with winmodems in the past - the obstacles placed by Microsoft in the way of anyone who wished to write open drivers for them. That is a legal issue which should have been addressed in the Microsoft antitrust case. But from a technical standpoint, the simple-hardware concept behind the winmodem is the correct approach.
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