What It Looked Like To The User
Not all of the transmission was visible to the user. The most noticeable part of the transmission was the report of status codes like ACK, GOO, BAD, and SYN for handshaking results. A typical transmission might look like ACKGOOGOOGOOGOOBADGOOGOOGOOBADGOO, with bad blocks reported to the user just as frequently as they occurred. This allowed users to record the error rate according to hour and day of the week, and determine which hours of the day, and which days of the week had cleaner phone lines. Unlike modern PC computers, the C-64 and C-128 could poll the User Port (where the modem was interfaced) at slightly different BAUD rates and connection speeds. For instance, a transmission at 1200 BAUD on Sunday evening might actually produce fewer errors than 2400 BAUD on Tuesday afternoon. By choosing slower BAUD rates, files could actually be transmitted faster than at higher BAUD rates, inasmuch as there were fewer re-sends in a given transfer.
An improved Punter protocol, C1, was in use after 1988.
Read more about this topic: Punter (protocol)
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