Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: metahawk@connectus.com (Wayne Rigby) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: ZyXEL Elite 2864 Ultra High Speed Modem Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm Date: 29 Jan 1996 16:13:39 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 470 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <4eirnj$e49@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: metahawk@connectus.com (Wayne Rigby) NNTP-Posting-Host: maya.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, modem, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 2 Originator: barrett@maya PRODUCT NAME ZyXEL Elite 2864 Ultra High Speed Modem BRIEF DESCRIPTION The Elite 2864 is a high speed modem handling speeds of 28.8 kbaud with V.34/V.32bis/V.42bis and many other protocols. It also features Facsimile and Voice modes. In addition, the 2864 is upgradable to ISDN. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: ZyXEL Communications Corporation Address: 4920 East La Palma Avenue Anaheim, CA 92807 U.S.A. Telephone: (800)255-4101 (714)693-0808 8 am - 5 pm PST FAX: (714)693-8811 (714)693-0705 E-mail: sales@zyxel.com Sale inquiries tech@zyxel.com Technical Support Fidonet: Primary address: 1:103/725 Secondary address: 1:202/701.101 CompuServe: CIS ID: 71333,2734 Forum: GO ZYXEL BBS: (714)693-0762 FTP: ftp://ftp.zyxel.com/pub/other/zyxel World Wide Web: http://www.zyxel.com LIST PRICE Unfortunately I could not find a current list price. However, ZyXEL offers frequent upgrade prices, including competitive upgrades. I have seen the Elite 2864 for $260 US in some mail order advertisements. The list price when they originally appeared on the market back in mid-1995 put them in the $600 US range. The price has dropped considerably since then. DEMO VERSION None. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE A free serial port is required. A high speed serial card is highly recommended. SOFTWARE A communications terminal program or network interface program with SLIP or PPP abilities. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000-25, 2 MB Chip RAM, 12 MB Fast RAM 2 internal 1760 kB floppies Kickstart 40.68 and Workbench 40.42 MultiFaceCard III CyberVision 64 with 4 MB RAM Bernoulli Transportable, The Box 150 Quantum LPS525S, 525 MB internal hard drive IDEK Iiyama MF-5021 21" Multiscan Color Monitor Epson ActionLaser 1600 with EpsonScript Level 2 Upgrade Amiga OS 3.1 AmiFileSafe 2.2 AmiTCP 4.2 Term 4.4 INSTALLATION Installation was simple enough. The modem came with a variety of cables, including a 25-pin serial cable. Just attach the modem to a 25-pin serial port, a phone line into the back of the modem, and the power cable to the back. Then with any terminal program, it is ready to run. REVIEW A few months back I received an upgrade form from ZyXEL offering me the opportunity to upgrade my older ZyXEL U-1496E to the brand new ZyXEL Elite 2864. I jumped at the opportunity, having been completely pleased with the power of my U-1496E. So, I sent in the form and a few weeks later I had a brand new modem capable of 28.8 kbaud communications with the V.34 protocol. However, I got more than I bargained for. The ZyXEL Elite 2864 comes with the modem, an external power brick (similar to the Amiga 500's and 1200's with power switch on the brick), a 25-pin dual-purpose cable, a 25-pin gender changer, a short phone cord, power cable, a small Quick Start Guide, registration card, and several floppies of IBM software. The modem has a bank of 21 LEDs on the front, along with 2 large push buttons. On the modem's right side are two jacks, one for a microphone and one for external speakers. The modem does have an internal speaker to make all that harassing noise when one dials and connects. Of course those noises can be disabled via software. The back of the modem has a power port, a 25-pin serial port, a parallel port, and 2 phone jacks (one in, one out). My roommates nicknamed my modem as the Ludicrous Modem. And there is good reason. I will just list out the various features below. o Supported link speeds between 300 and 28800 bps for data communications, supporting the following protocols: V.34, ZyX19200, ZyX16800, V.32bis, V.32, V.22bis, V.22, V.21, Bell 212A, Bell 103, ZyXEL Cellular, V.42, V.42bis, MNP4, MNP5, V.26bis, V.23, V.13, etc. o Supported link speeds between 2400 and 14400 bps for FAX communications supporting V.17, V.29, and V.27ter. o Built in voice compression with the choice of 4 different algorithms. 2bits/sample ADPCM at 19200 bps DTE, 3bits/sample ADPCM at 28800 bps DTE, 3bits/sample ADPCM at 30720 bps DTE with sync bits, and 4bits/sample ADPCM at 38400 bps DTE. o Serial DTE speed supported up to 460.8 kbps for synchronous and asynchronous communications. I know of no current serial adapters for the Amiga which can handle this speed, however. o Optional parallel port connectivity for even higher speed asynchronous communications or to hook the modem up to either a Postscript Level I, Hewlett Packard (HP) Deskjet 500 series ink jet printers, HP Laserjet II printers, HP Laserjet III printers and compatibles to automatically print FAXes. (Note, the HP Deskjet 500 series and Postscript printer support is new as of version 1.09 of the firmware. See the notes below on upgrading the Elite series firmware.) o A host of standard mid-range modem capabilities. A quick list being Tone/Pulse dialing, non-volatile memory storage for modem configurations, remote configuration, security call back, Caller ID, distinctive ring detection, line signal quality fallback/fallforward, and DTMF detection. And now, the nitty gritty... I have been using this modem with AmiTCP 4.2/PPP constantly for the five months I have had it. I have also used it for standard, direct call up connections. In addition I had it hooked up to a Pentium 100 to play 2-player Hexen for a few hours. In all cases it has performed delightfully. 14.4 kbaud communications are simple enough. 28.8 kbaud communications, on the other hand, I have not been able attain. Calling into my Internet provider's US Robotics V.34 28.8 kbaud modems tends to get me either a 24000 or a 26400 V.34 connection. This seems to be due to line conditions. At 26400, the Elite 2864 quite regularly flashes its Signal Quality LED, indicating that the line conditions are poor and it is retraining. The US Robotics on the other end supports this and the retrain is usually successful. However, every once in a while the retrain will fail and the link will be dropped. At 24000 connections, it retrains less, but it does attempt to train up to a 26400 connection now and then, with the same results (about 70% success, 30% line dropped). This is but a minor inconvenience for me. I just offline my PPP connection without issuing a Stopnet, then issue a new Startnet and nearly all of my connections are resumed without any apparent interruption. The modem can automatically detect and differentiate between FAX and data connections. In addition, the modem has a parallel port on it. A Postscript Level 1, HP Deskjet 500 series, HP Laserjet II, HP Laserjet III or compatible printer may be attached directly to the modem and have it automatically print any FAXes received. The computer does not need to be turned on or even connected in this case. I have played with this feature and it works exactly as advertised. I sent FAXes from a FAX machine at work and when I returned home, there they were in my laser printer's output tray. My Amiga was not even powered on. Unfortunately there appears to be no way to print from the host computer to the printer attached to the modem without rearranging cables. This would have been a convenient feature. In addition, the 2864 can be upgraded to have 2 MB, 4 MB or 8 MB of RAM. This is accomplished with combinations of 1, 2, or 4 DRAM chips. The chips are 4Mx4 organized 16Mbit chips in SOJ packaging. 60 or 70 ns chips are suggested. More specific information can be obtained from the manual which is available at ZyXEL's Web site. I have not looked into how much this RAM costs, but I cannot imagine that single chips which contain 2 MB of RAM each can be all that cheap. The addition of RAM into the modem allows the storage of FAXes in the modem's memory, thus eliminating the need for a printer or a computer to be powered on or connected to receive FAXes. Just come home, power on your connected printer, push a button on the front of the modem, and it will print out all received FAXes. The manual did not seem to indicate a way to be able to download FAXes to the computer from the 2864's RAM instead of printing. The modem also supports Voice communications. I.e., it can act like an answering machine/phone tree/telephony service. A computer program can be written to create a phone tree or answering machine service using the modem. This is possible due to the modem's DTMF tone detection. (It can detect when a number on a touch tone phone has been pressed.) The built in voice compression routines also are a boon for such applications, compressing the recorded voice within the modem, taking the load off the computer and reducing the amount of disk storage necessary to store the messages. The compressed voice messages can be sent back to the modem for decompression or a program can be written on the host computer to do the decompression. Sufficient information is in the modem's manual for writing a program to do this. In addition, there are various ways that sound can be directed through the modem system. Sound can be compressed from the phone line and passed into the host computer. Or sound can be compressed from the modem's microphone jack and passed into the host computer. In addition, the inputs (phone jack and microphone jack) can have their data sent to the optional 2, 4 or 8 MB of onboard DRAM on the modem. Messages stored in DRAM can be played back later in a similar fashion to the storage of facsimiles in DRAM. The play back can be sent to the handset attached to the out phone jack in back or out the speaker jack on the modem. The Elite 2864 supports Distinctive Ring and Caller ID. Distinctive Ring is a feature available from the phone company. Effectively it takes 2 or more telephone numbers and puts them onto one phone cable. I.e., 2 or more phone numbers would all go to one phone. However, whenever any particular phone number is called, the phone will ring slightly differently. The Elite 2864 can detect these differences and be told to either answer or ignore the particular distinctive ring. Thus one can have a data/fax line which the modem will pick up, a phone tree line which the modem will pick up, and then a standard voice line which the modem will ignore, passing through for a person or real answering machine to pick up. Unfortunately, without something like this, the modem will not be able to tell the difference between a voice or fax/data call. Caller ID is supported and programs can be designed to pull out the incoming phone number after the first ring, displaying it on the screen or even announcing it via voice synthesis. The modem's parallel port also allows the modem to be connected to a computer via a bidirectional parallel port on the host computer. This allows the modem to work at full 28.8 kbaud speeds on computers with slow serial ports (e.g., stock Amiga 500's and 2000's), and allows computers to use the modem at full ISDN speeds. However, ZyXEL does not provide a driver for the Amiga for this. Drivers are available for Windows, MS-DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT. However, after looking over the the Elite 2864's manual, there does not appear to be any reason why a driver could not be written for the Amiga. It should be easier than it was for other platforms. All that should be needed is to write a dummy serial driver that interfaces with a bidirectional parallel driver. This should be possible with the Amiga's built in parallel port, and should definitely be possible with third party multi-I/O cards like the MultiFaceCard series and similar. Unfortunately I am not as familiar as I would like to be with Amiga programming, otherwise I would have already written such a driver. The Elite 2864 is one of a series of modems by ZyXEL. While I have the standard version, the other versions are similar enough that I will list the differences here. o Elite 2864 - Lowest end Elite. LED front panel, serial port, parallel port, phone jack in and phone jack out. o Elite 2864L - Leased line version. Supports 2/4-wire leased line operations. Otherwise the same as the standard Elite 2864. o Elite 2864I - ISDN version with the ISDN S-interface RJ45 connector. o Elite 2864IU - Same as the 2864I except it has the ISDN U-interface. o Supreme 2864L - LCD front panel instead of LEDs. Much more informative. Otherwise very similar to the Elite 2864L. o Supreme 2864I - LCD version of the Elite 2864I. o Supreme 2864IU - LCD version of the Elite 2864IU. o Omni 288P - A portable 28.8 kbaud V.34 modem with data/voice/fax capabilities but no ISDN capability. This version is to be attached to a parallel port. o Omni 288S - Same as the Omni 288P but for attaching to a serial port. The Elite 2864 modem may be upgraded with an upgrade kit to an Elite 2864I (either version) by the end user. Actually it appears than any Elite 2864 modem could be changed to any other type of Elite 2864 as they are designed modularly. However, it seems that only an upgrade kit to an ISDN version is available. It is very easy to upgrade the firmware of an Elite modem. Elite modems include Flash EPROMs, allowing them to be upgraded without opening the modems up. Just download the latest version of the firmware from the Web or FTP site. Unfortunately these files are currently only in PKzip format which might be a problem. There is an Unzip program available for the Amiga somewhere, however. This zip file contains two files. A note file indicating what has changed since the last version of firmware and the actual firmware update. To upgrade the modem, one just issues an ATUPX command to the modem while in command mode. It will as if you really want to do this. If an answer of Yes is returned, it starts erasing the EPROM. After a moment, it requests that you upload the new firmware to the modem from the host computer using the Xmodem protocol. If something fatal happens in mid-process, there is a way to automatically throw the modem into the EPROM update procedure by holding down a combination of the front panel buttons upon power up. My Elite 2864 shipped with Firmware version 1.04. I recently upgraded to 1.09. It worked flawlessly and did not even require the modem to be power cycled afterwards. It was ready to go immediately after the upload. A much simpler process than the older ZyXEL modems of popping out the EPROMs, erasing them under strong ultraviolet light, and then using en EPROM programmer to reburn them. DOCUMENTATION Documentation that came with the modem is a small, half-inch (about one centimeter) thick Quick Start Guide which is stapled together. This manual is just that, a Quick Start Guide. It is fairly comprehensive, including all the information a standard user of the modem will ever need. However, it does not contain everything a power user will want to know. The User's Guide is available on ZyXEL's web site in either Postscript or Acrobat Reader formats. The web administrator indicated that an HTML version was in the works and that the manuals would be available on the FTP site. The web site administrator also indicated that he would be more than willing to send a printed copy out if one did not have access to a postscript printer. The Quick Start Guide keeps things pretty simple, starting out by explaining the basic concepts pertaining to modems, how to hook it up to one's computer, basic settings to be used in the terminal program, and a quick list of AT command codes used by the modem. Pretty basic but enough for most people. The optional User's Guide contains everything the Quick Start Guide has. In addition it goes into much more depth. It explains the differences between the various models of the Elite 2864 modems and Omni 288 modems; an in depth description of the AT command sets used by the modems; description of the voice compression formats; details about upgrade options (ISDN, Leased Line, DRAM, and Firmware); diagnostics; tips and hints, a decent glossary; various appendices, including one on the Amiga; and a nice index. LIKES What I like about this modem is the quality behind it. This is a rather full featured modem great for all those nice buzzwords like `multimedia ready,' `FAX capable,' and so forth. This modem is not for everyone. It is rather expensive. However I would suggest it for small businesses, power users, and quality BBS's. In addition, ZyXEL's Web site is very handy. Complete copies of the latest versions of the manuals and firmware are readily available there. Older versions of the firmware are generally available on the FTP site. In addition, technical support is readily available via the net. ZyXEL has sufficient ways to contact them that someone should be able to get through to someone knowledgeable pretty quickly. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS There are few dislikes that I have with this product at all. But as nothing is perfect, there are always some. o The User's Guide should be shipped with the modem. o Firmware updates should be available on the Internet in archive formats other than PkZip. o There ought to be a way to dump FAXes and/or stored voice messages in the modem's onboard DRAM to the host computer instead of just printing out the FAXes and playing back the voice messages. o A pass through printing option would be nice. Would be very nice to hook a printer up to the modem and the modem to the host computer and still be able to print from computer to printer via way of the modem so one does not need a switch box or to constantly yank and reattach cables. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS I have used many different modems over the years. However the closest I have used to the ZyXEL Elite 2864 was my older ZyXEL U-1496E. This modem could handle 16.8 kbaud data rate transfers and 14.4 kbaud FAX capabilities. It also supported voice features though not as many options as the Elite 2864. I was very pleased with my U-1496E. The main advantages of the Elite 2864 over the U-1496E are full 28.8 kbaud V.34 communication options, stand alone (computerless) options for FAX and Voice operations, and Flash EPROM updates. Other modems I have had experience with were generic 14.4 V.32b FAX/modems. I was forced to use one of these when I accidentally destroyed one of the EPROMs in my ZyXEL U-1496E. I can only say that it was a horrible experience. The generic 14.4 modem would drop line connections all the time as it lacked the advanced retrain capabilities of the ZyXEL. BUGS None discovered by myself, but each Flash EPROM update includes a note file indicating improved or new features and usually a long list of fixed bugs. Most bugs are rather minor and would not be noticed by most users. VENDOR SUPPORT I have contacted the vendor a few times. Once by phone. The lady I spoke to appeared to have a good data retrieval system at her fingertips, finding information on my current hardware within a few seconds. In addition she seemed fairly knowledgeable about the product. I am sure she was not an engineer, but she knew enough to answer most common problems which would be encountered by novice users. I have also contacted a few of the ZyXEl people on the net via email. They are helpful, and appear to take suggestions rather seriously. WARRANTY The ZyXEL Elite 2864 is covered by a 5 year warranty from date of purchase to the original, end user purchaser. This warranty covers defects, faulty workmanship, failure due to faulty materials and the similar. This warranty is valid only in the USA and Canada. CONCLUSIONS This modem is a good investment. It is easy to expand and has enough capabilities to satisfy most power users. It is slightly more expensive than similar products by USRobotics. But the upgradability makes up for this. My only real quips are the lack of direct support for the Amiga, but this is no surprise. I give this product 4 stars out of 5. Once a parallel port driver becomes available on the Amiga, I might upgrade that to 5 out of 5. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1996 Wayne Rigby --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews