Beating the System
New modem card gives you access to hotel, office digital phone lines.
By Elliot Borin
Its developer, Ositech Communications, describes it as "crossing the last modem frontier," and while that may be a bit hyperbolic while really high-speed transmission over standard phone lines is still impossible, there is no doubt that their new
Five of Diamonds Trumpcard is a significant achievement in portable connectivity.
The first PC modem card usable with digital phone systems, the
Five of Diamonds also serves as a full-featured 33.6Kbps fax/modem card (14.4Kbps fax speed) when used over traditional analog lines.
"We feel that the Five of Diamonds has heralded in a new era through enhanced functionality rather than simple performance enhancements," says Ositech senior product manager Michael
Dodgson. "No longer will mobile professionals need to search for special analog phone lines, or conduct presentations in fax rooms."
The DPI (Digital Phone Interface) technology used in the
Five of Diamonds takes advantage of the fact that digital telephone receivers actually have two circuits, one digital and one analog. The digital circuitry controls dial-tone generation, switching, and other connectivity issues. The analog circuitry connects the phone base to its handset.
Used with a digital phone system, the Ositech card connects to an adapter that routes its signal to the wire running between the phone receiver and handset. Special software routes your data from the handset line, through the phone, and onto the outgoing phone line. About the only negative side effect of the whole process is that you can't auto-dial from an address book or contact list - calls have to be dialed manually from the telephone's keypad. Once you've dialed and gotten a connection message, sending and receiving text, transmitting data, collecting e-mail, and surfing the Net works just as if you were using a normal analog modem.
In addition to its one-of-a-kind ability to interconnect with digital phones, the
Five of Diamonds has a raft of other high-tech features like Smart Cellular connectivity, flash ROM
upgradeability, digital phone line guard, automatic media detection for analog, digital, or cellular phones, an intelligent power-management system that automatically powers down the system when there is no connection detected, and the ability to support throughput rates of up to 230,000Bps.
The Five of Diamonds is covered by a five-year warranty and toll-free tech support from your choice of live technicians, an FTP file server, or a BBS.
Though not the biggest PC Card maker by any means, Ositech has long been legendary for its innovative approach to communications problem solving. With the introduction of the
Five of Diamonds, that legend has just grown a bit larger. For more information, contact Ositech at 888-OSITECH [674-8324], 519-836-8063, or
www.ositech.com.
Portable Computing Direct Shopper Magazine, June 1997
