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On Sun, 8 Dec 1996, Jesse Montrose wrote: > At 04:28 PM 12/8/96 -0800, Tom Franklin wrote: > > > >It uses a dongle. I don't like the XJacks -- I was always fearful it > >would break. Different strokes . . . > > These poor xjacks take an amazing amount of abuse, since I use it at home, > the phone cord is generally laying about begging to get tripped over, > stepped on, etc. The XJacks on the MHz modems are the full thickness of the card except for two sheets of metal. The dongles, by virtue of having to plug into the card while protecting the pin connectors, are usually about 1/2 to 3/4 the thickness of the card. The dongles usually extend further out from the computer as well. What this means is that in a drop or yank, the dongles have a bigger moment arm and a smaller thickness to resist that moment. The dongle on my AT&T modem barely survived a fall off my lap onto the sofa. It was bent but the wires still worked. It died the next drop. My IBM ethernet card's dongle has held up a little better, but it's also a little loose due to a fall. The MHz XJack I had survived numerous falls. Often the XJack was short enough that the computer case took the brunt of the fall. The couple times it fell on the XJack, the XJack just popped back in. I also inadvertently lifted the computer by the XJack a couple times, without ill effects. The MHz rep I spoke to when I returned my first modem (DOA) said they'd never had an XJack modem returned due to the XJack breaking off. Of course this was in 1993... -- John H. Kim jokim@mit.edu