[Coco] Is it hopeless...

[Dave Philipsen]

Technically there is a difference between bit rate and baud rate. However, the terms have come to be used interchangeably and most people will not call you out for using “baud” when you technically mean “bps”. 

> On Jan 28, 2020, at 12:04 AM, James Ross <jrosslist at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Stan Blazejewski wrote:
>> I shudder to think how long some of these messages
>> would have taken to download at 300 baud :-)
> 
> Is 300 baud the same as 300 bps (bits per second)? In essence 30 bytes second?  (8 bit data bytes 2 control bits)
> 
> Was 300 baud the de-facto speed back when TTY meant some mechanical typing machine? Is that why it's so slow? Surely even the very first phone lines could carry a signal much faster that 300 bps?
> 

Originally, TTY was even slower than 300 bps and used a different character encoding than ASCII (which is used by most computers). 

And, yes, the first phone lines could carry a signal much faster than 300 bps. It’s just that the technology for doing so was not available until later. 

> -James
> 
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco