| The Atari 830 Acoustic
coupler modem was Atari's first communications device for
telephone communications. It worked in a manual
fashion. The user would have to have a phone that
would conform to Bell standards and have round handset ends
for hearing and talking. The user would pick up their
phone, dial a telephone number of a computer, wait for the
phone to be picked up, the computer on the other end would
then send out a tone requesting speed and acknowledgement.
The user would then place the phone handset down into the
"cups" and push it down so as to make a good seal with the
acoustic couplers. The modem would then send its speed
rate, which for the Atari 830, it was 300 Baud (or bit rate
per second, also commonly referred to as BPS)
At that speed is could take
nearly 5 seconds to fill the screen with alpha-numeric
characters (letters, numbers and basic symbols.) There
were no graphics, animation, video or audio during this
period. That would not appear until high speeds and in
later years as basic serial terminal programs would be
repaced with proprietary software and eventually the Browers
that are in use today.
The Atari 830 is a standard
RS-232-C device and requires the Atari 850 Interface module
to connect to an Atari 400/800 computer system (or the later
XL/XE computers.) However, since it is a standard
modem, it could be used on any computer that has a standard
Serial interface.
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