36 Years and 1800 Issues of TidBITS

@mschmitt Michael Schmitt
Tue, 05 May 2026 21:24:42 +0000

David C.:

PC serial ports could always go up to 115,200 bps, but the 8250 UART typically used at the time only has a 1 byte buffer, so at high bit-rates (anything above 9600), software often couldn’t keep up, causing characters to get dropped.

AT&K3 for the win?

What was the typical modem speed back then? I think I was using a 300 bps modem to connect my original Macintosh to a BBS.