A modem was considered screamingly fast in the mid 80's if it was 1200 baud. Bought up by Warez Kings, porn (prOn?) freaks, and FIDOboard masters of the 80's en masse, 1200's could download your favorite massive (1 meg at the time) game within the hour! Quite a step up from the 300 bauds preceeding them, their pricing was quite reasonable at the time; roughly $99 for a quality brand. (Hayes, Practical Peripherals, and a few other brands dominated the market. Incidentally, it was quite sad to see Hayes go out of business a few years ago, after all their pioneering work they did in the modem field). 1200's were slowly pushed out by even faster 2400 baud modems shortly thereafter. Internal models were generally preferred, but many hardcore geeks of the time preferred external versions, regardless of the $20-30 additional cost -- purely to show off their hardware. Find someone who can remember what v.32 bis, v.42 bis, or MNP-5 is, and you'll have found someone who is able to tell you all about those good ol' glory days.

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