Matt Mc_Carthy wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 MMC> 18 Aug 2003, 20:01, Roy J. Tellason (1:270/615), wrote to Wayne
 MMC> Chirnside: 

 MMC> Hi Roy.

 WC>> Seems this KFLEX standard modem was used in lots of systems. 
 WC>> Compaq, H.P., NEC, ect. in many incarnations and all crapped out 
 WC>> when V.90 was superceded.

 RJT> I've heard of KFLEX but don't recall much about it.

 MMC> About six months prior to V.90 there were two different standards
 MMC> "proposed".  One was "X-2", supported by US
Robotics and Texas
 MMC> Instrument, the other was K-Flex, supported by Rockwell and
 MMC> everyone else.

I was following that to a very limited extent,  but never really paid all
that much attention to it.  I was using USR since I went to 28.8,  and of
course favored them because of that.

 MMC> As it turned out, the market wouldn't wait for a "standard" to be
 MMC> defined, so everyone went into production with their own versions
 MMC> of either X-2 or K-Flex, both of which were compatible with the
 MMC> interim 'standard'.   

 MMC> Early versions of both were pure hardware, ROM controlled, and
 MMC> turned out to be worthless when the standard was set.  Later
 MMC> versions of both were Flash-BIOS controlled, and were upgradeable
 MMC> with a simple download to the V.90 standard. 

I'm pretty sure that the Couriers I have are both flash-upgradeable.  The
first one I got was taken out in a storm,  the other is pretty much the
same (I just plugged it in and everything I use here worked okay).  They're
both flashed to 33.6,  I think,  but what they did when it came to
upgrading beyond that kinda ticked me off.  I got mine through their sysop
program,  and I'd have thought that they would let me know what was what. 
I guess not,  though.  And by the time I did find out about it,  it was
*real* late in the whole process...

No matter,  it's only important when the other end is connecting to the
phone network digitally is what I was given to understand and that's not
the case for a bbs.

OTOH,  I'm glad I have this Maxtech here for doing the 'net thing,  once
that gets going here.  (Soon,  I hope!)

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