Skip to content
Thoughtful, detailed coverage of everything Apple for 33 years
and the TidBITS Content Network for Apple professionals

The Gold Standard

Director of Technical Services, Baka Industries Inc.

Expressing a tongue-in-cheek belief that "everyone should be able to afford gold," Global Village Communication earlier this month announced its new TelePort Gold II modem, with a suggested retail price of $155. The new modem replaces the popular TelePort Gold, offers most of the same features, and adds greyscale fax capability.

Physically, the TelePort Gold II resembles the TelePort Bronze II, the $109 2400 bps modem that replaced Global Village’s original line of ADB-connected modems. Unlike the Bronze II, though, the Gold II does not draw power from the Mac’s ADB port; it has its own AC adapter. The new modem replaces the original Gold’s AT&T modem chipset with a Rockwell V.32bis chipset. The Rockwell chips have appeared in several popular modems, such as those from Supra.

Although the TelePort Gold II has the same basic specifications as its departing sibling, such as 14,400 bps data communications and 14,400 bps send and receive faxing, it lacks the OCR (optical character recognition, or text scanning) feature previously included with the TelePort Gold. The OCR functionality is now available only with the TelePort Mercury, the company’s top of the line "V.32terbo" 19,200 bps modem that sports 14,400 bps faxing. Gold II owners will also be able to purchase the GlobalFax OCR software for $49 plus shipping. The TelePort Gold II includes Global Village’s popular GlobalFax software for sending and receiving faxes, and a free (fully licensed) copy of Dave Alverson’s ZTerm terminal software.

Global Village says the TelePort Gold II requires some version of System 7, up to and including 7.5. This requirement should only be relevant if you use the fax software, since for data communications it’s just a serial device. The GlobalFax software does not support QuickDraw GX at this time, though the company is working on a GX-compatible driver.

For the first time, Global Village is shipping its GlobalFax 2.1 software with a stand-alone modem. Version 2.1.3 provides greyscale fax sending capabilities at two quality levels comparable to the "best" and "faster" modes in Apple’s ImageWriter driver. It also offers intelligent requeueing of unsent or incomplete faxes and better handling of the memo text on cover sheets. Previously, GlobalFax 2.1 was bundled only with the OneWorld fax servers (see TidBITS-232 and TidBITS-236 for more details).

Global Village Communication — 800/736-4821 — 415/390-8200
415/390-8222 (sales fax) — <[email protected]>

Information from:
Global Village propaganda

Subscribe today so you don’t miss any TidBITS articles!

Every week you’ll get tech tips, in-depth reviews, and insightful news analysis for discerning Apple users. For over 33 years, we’ve published professional, member-supported tech journalism that makes you smarter.

Registration confirmation will be emailed to you.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA. The Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.