Netcomm Smartmodem M5 review
By Cameron Brawn
Copyright (c) 1990 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
Apple // BBS Sysop
Currently, the majority of Sydney Bulletin boards are running modems with a maximum speed of 2400 baud, or about 240 characters per second. However there are more and more BBS's around that are switching to higher speed modems, and users are also going to the higher speeds. Netcomm, probably the best modem builders in Australia, have a number of modems that are capable of running faster than what has been "the norm" for the last few years. The modem I am reviewing is the Smartmodem M5, which has a maximum speed of 9600 Baud, or approximately 960 characters per second. After using the modem for nearly two weeks, and running the BBS on the modem, I am very impressed with it. I was able to take the modem straight out of the box, and use it without having to change and of the settings. The modem is capable of 300, 1200, 1200/75, 2400, 4800 and 9600 Baud, basically everything you would ever want. The modem also has many other advanced features, many of which would never be used by the average user. On the front of them modem is 9 leds, telling the user at all times what is happening, including what speed the modem is currently running.
The manual that comes with the modem is almost 250 pages, and is not written with the first time user in mind. If I had never used a modem before, the manual would have been impossible to understand. The fact that the modem can be used straight out of the box reduces this problem somewhat, as you would probably be able to use the modem without ever needing to read beyond the installation instructions.
As soon as I had the modem plugged in and running, I started to look through the BBS list for systems that have 9600. There were quite a few in Sydney, and I must point out that neither of the AUG's systems have 9600 baud modems yet, although Club Mac does, and AUGUR, the only other system that supports the Apple // to a decent extent in Sydney. So AUGUR is was, and the first problem I came across was that none of the communications programs could scroll the screen without loosing characters. Some programs were better than others, Proterm and Ascii Express Pro tying for the worst, and Ascii Express Mousetalk coming out the best. I powered up the Mac (512ke with 1024k) and tried that. The Mac worked fine running Red Ryder, so I found the biggest file on AUGUR and proceeded to download it. The file was 314,368 Bytes, or 307k. Augur said the file would take about 10 Minutes at 9600. If you set up two computers side by side and transmitted data without any error checking protocols, it would take about 6 minutes, with error checking, about 8.
Considering the distance between systems, software and hardware overheads, 10 Minutes sounds very good. It ended up taking 23 Minutes. Some difference! By then I had set up the GS in place of the //e on the BBS, so I kicked off AE mousetalk on the GS and away we went. Proterm on a 7Mhz GS still wasn't fast enough, but Mousetalk was fine on a
standard 2.8Mhz GS, so I downloaded the same file. 9 Minutes, 31 seconds later it was all over, faster than Augur had suggested, and 2.4 times than the Mac! This shows how important a good communications package is at such high speeds. No doubt there are better programs available on the Mac which would reduce the transfer time.
My next "test" was to ring the States at 9600 to see how the modem went over such a distance, and how well it handled line noise. The problem here is that there is a world standard for modems that the US and Canada decided not to follow. The M5 is compatible with the US standard (Bell) 300 and 1200 Baud only, so the modem cannot be used at even 2400, something that I found very unusual, as the Netcomm 1234A does have Bell 2400. Meaning that if you want to ring the States, you are better off with a 1234, not an M5.... While I was logged on to a Washington BBS (at 1200), I downloaded a list of US BBS's and had a look through it later to see how many supported 9600. There were 1300 entries in the list, and about 600 of them supported 9600 baud. Of those, about 30 supported the 9600 standard that the M5 follows. I didn't ring any of the systems at 9600, as they were all for IBM users, and I don't have a list for Mac or Apple II systems. However while online to Washington, there were two errors in the 102k transfer, much less than I was expecting, and no noticeable line errors while not transferring.
There are a number of other features the modem has that are worth mentioning, "Trellis Coded Modulation" (TCM), and "Microcom Networking Protocol" (MNP) Error correction. TCM is a system the modem uses to detect and sometimes automatically correct data errors during 9600 baud communications.
MNP is a modem based transfer protocol that allows for detection and correction of data errors. The smartmodem supports 4 classes of MNP, and will automatically work out with the other modem which class to use (the highest common class). Class 4 allows a transfer rate of 120% to be achieved, or a transfer of 2900 baud on a 2400 baud line. I tried this at 9600 on Augur, and the transfer took 11.5 minutes, somewhat confusing.
In Summary, I was very impressed by the Netcomm M5 Smartmodem, it worked flawlessly, and has nearly all the features somebody would ever require. There are many other features I have not gone into here, such as leased line operation, ringback security, stored number dialing and synchronous operation. Many of which would probably never be used by the average user. My only complaint is the fact that it does not support Bell 2400, when lower specification Netcomm modems do.
The Modem is not cheap, with a RRP of $1999, however for your money you get a very reliable and powerful modem that will not become out of date for a great deal of years.
Review modem supplied by Netcomm (Australia) Pty. Ltd., 888-5533

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