I started with an 1200 baud Commodore 1680, then upgraded to a SupraModem through a BBS sponsor program. USRobotics pioneered these, but other manufacturers followed suit on. Basically, if you ran a BBS and displayed a banner ad for the modem, you could buy it (the modem) at a pretty reasonable discount.
It worked really well for years, especially after the initial ROM upgrade (which came supplied not as a flashable update you could download, but as ROM chips that you had to physically swap out).
Supra, like USR, supplied upgrades as well, in the form of a motherboard swap.
I did always want a USR Courier; there was something to the big, black, red LED-lit badassery that was appealing to my teenage self, but the Supra had a little green matrix that told you the status of the session, which was really nice.
An official Hayes one? No.
I started with an 1200 baud Commodore 1680, then upgraded to a SupraModem through a BBS sponsor program. USRobotics pioneered these, but other manufacturers followed suit on. Basically, if you ran a BBS and displayed a banner ad for the modem, you could buy it (the modem) at a pretty reasonable discount.
It worked really well for years, especially after the initial ROM upgrade (which came supplied not as a flashable update you could download, but as ROM chips that you had to physically swap out).
Supra, like USR, supplied upgrades as well, in the form of a motherboard swap.
I did always want a USR Courier; there was something to the big, black, red LED-lit badassery that was appealing to my teenage self, but the Supra had a little green matrix that told you the status of the session, which was really nice.