II. Read and translate the following text:

The word «Modern is an acronym for «modulator -.demodulators, the name of a piece of electronic equipment that converts the signals⁴ from your computer to tones that can be transmitted over phone lines, allowing your computer to «talk» to an­other, by «whistling» messages back and forth.

A modem was cigar box-like device, with two foam cups. You took telephone receiver and stuck the earpiece into one cup and the mouthpiece into the other. Such a unit was an acoustic modem.

Today, most modems are the size of a textbook and have several red lights on their faces. On these, you snap the modulator plug out of your telephone and into the modem and by avoiding the acoustic computing to the above - mentioned antique, you are able to com­municate at higher speed. There are modems as small as a matchbox with no lights (which evolution in electron­ics has rendered less necessary); and same even built into the computer.

Next you'll be asked what speed you want: 300, 1200, 14400, 2400, 9600 baud. The «baud rate» describes how fast a modem can send and receive. The most common speed today is 33600. It depends on the quality of telephone communication.

If a line is so bad that voice communication is impaired, you can bet modem communication would be top. On the other hand if a line is only a little noisy, the modem may «hear» those noises as signals and generate some weird characters on the screen. This problem can be eliminated with Microcom Networking Protocol (MNP), an error-correction protocol built into some mo­dems. MNP isn't absolutely necessary, but it is nice to have.

The main vendors of modems are. IDC, RoboticsGVC.

EXERCISES:

I. Answer the following questions:

1. What is «modern” an acronym for?

2. What allows your computer to «talk» to another, by «whistling» messages back and forth?

3. What was a modern like?

4. How many lights do most modems have ortheir faces?

5. What other modems do exist?

6. What is the speed of a modem?

7 What can this problem be eliminated with?

II Fill in the blanks with appropriate words:

A piece of electronic equipment ... the signals from the computer to tones that can be transmitted over phone lines. Your computer will be allowed to ... another. In this case you are able to... The «baud rate»… how fast a mo­dem can send and receive. The modern may _ some weird characters on screen.

Communicate describes generate convert talk

III. Define the terms using the word-combinations in brackets:

modem - {device, is, converts, a hardware, that, internal, from, signals, form, to, computer, transmittable, a form, communication, (or thereverse), lines, over) microcomputer - • (computer, includes, main memory, small, several, that, input/output channels,

system, main, and, memory, microprocessor, chips, as,, many, hundreds).

IV. Retell the text.

V. Tell what you know about the variety of modems.

LESSON 15. POKE YOUR NOSE INTO COMPUTER.