5 ms·

Running the 1G Analog Phone from 1997

120 points by possiblelion 5y ago

snypher 5y ago
I wish everyone Medium author would just buy a .com and publish there. I'm not signing in to read text, sorry.
- bserge 5y ago
  Are there any advantages of using Medium over Wordpress.com?
  - lmm 5y ago
    It has a much nicer editor and it looks better by default.
  - marapuru 5y ago
    I think it's more fair to compare Medium to Ghost (https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/). It has all the tools for writing, publishing, maintaining subscriber databases and even payments. Self hosted or hosted by ghost. You have all the options.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Man those are both terrible. Just use a pastebin if you really care so little.
- maven29 5y ago
  I'm not sure if things have changed but the paywall is completely optional if you're in the partner program, although it is an opt-out setting on each post you make (if you're in the partner program). You will lose out on discoverability through the medium platform if you do this. This affects search engine rankings as well. >To remove your story from the paywall, follow these instructions. Because your post will no longer be a part of our metered paywall, it will also no longer be recommended to readers, except those who follow you. >At the moment, you can only unmeter a post if you're in the Partner Program. We're working on adding functionality that gives writers who aren't in the Partner Program the option to unmeter previously metered posts. In the meantime, you can join the Partner Program to see the option to unmeter your posts.
- cwales95 5y ago
  I can usually get around the issue by opening a private tab or by disabling JavaScript before reopening the page. Seems they try to limit your number of views to Medium articles and try to force you to pay for the privilege of viewing more than a few. But I agree, most of the time I don't even bother reading after encountering the paywall.
- dest 5y ago
  Install NoScript browser extention, then ban medium.com
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  Remember the RSS reader that was posted recently which generated new feeds by scraping websites? I was thinking of making something similar for Fandom pages to remove all of the page bloat. The content is CC-licensed so I think it should work. The idea is that you'd have a website which acts as a proxy for every Wikia/Fandom site and forwards the content to a MediaWiki instance with a minimalist theme and renders it there. The main issue I came across was that it turns out the wikitext format is highly implementation-depdendent and you'd basically need a full installation of MediaWiki to convert it to HTML. I don't know about Medium's terms for its content, but maybe having a self-hosted proxy for personal use would work. I'm surprised the proxy idea hasn't come up much for taking control of content from websites with dark patterns.
logbiscuitswave 5y ago
> The sound quality is surprisingly good. Now I understand why people were complaining when they moved from AMPS to the first generation of GSM — the FM with 12 KHz modulation works actually well. I remember this. When digital voice became commonplace a frequent complaint was how people sounded like they were underwater from the compression. I don’t think it was until VoLTE became a thing that I can recall a really big increase in voice quality since the move to digital voice.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Voice quality is still an issue but now is driven by greed. Pack as much channels as possible to maximize profit.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  It's amazing how much better an old, fuzzy copper landline was than my phone with VoLTE/VoIP turned off. (Or to someone else on a cell phone without either...)
  - logbiscuitswave 5y ago
    I vividly remember the Sprint ads I would see on TV as a kid where they claimed their voice quality was so good that you could hear a pin drop. Their phone number was even “1-800-PIN-DROP”.
jazzido 5y ago
Listening to phone calls was trivial back then (early to mid 90s). Pretty much only rich people owned cellphones where I lived, and my unlocked Kenwood TH-78E handheld transceiver gave me access to their world :)
- sherry-sherry 5y ago
  Well then... spill. Tell us what tidbits you heard please :)
  - rwmj 5y ago
    There was actually a musician who incorporated phone scanners into his work (under the appropriate stage name "Scanner"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud https://www.discogs.com/Scanner-Scanner/master/1767734 https://www.discogs.com/Scanner-Scanner/master/1767734
  - caboteria 5y ago
    In the '90's I worked with a bunch of ham operators in a building next to Route 95. Perhaps the most interesting call that we heard was a guy who kept switching between his wife and his girlfriend. IIRC (it was many years ago) neither one was happy with him.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    Late 90's, I heard all sorts of stuff. The one that really stands out was a girls basketball coach who was in town for a tournament on the phone with a prostitute, talking to her about the need for discretion.
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Cordless phones were pretty common during that era, and they were just as trivial to listen into. Teenage me had a hard time looking the neighbors in the eyes afterwards though...
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
rwmj 5y ago
https://archive.is/WI18G https://archive.is/WI18G
Animats 5y ago
They're really simple to talk to. I think the control channel is just a 1200 baud modem. SMS messages were originally intended as a way to send error messages (number out of service, etc.) to AMPS phones. Since they went over the control channel, they had to be very limited in length so as not to hog the shared control channel.
- zikduruqe 5y ago
  Ah... brings back memories. I can still hear the handoff message.. bizzip. I used to run an AMPS network back from 1991 to 1994. I miss the good old days; dailling NPA-NXX-7626 to reach a roamer, having to copy call records to magnetic tape to send off to GE for roaming calls, manually tuning combiners with my spectrum analyzer, calibrating audio levels on DS-0 cards using 1004 Hz tones, etc... it truly was a wireless telephone network.
jakecopp 5y ago
> Read the rest of this story with a free account. Oh how far Medium has fallen.
- ChrisRR 5y ago
  Was medium ever good?
fouc 5y ago
> This is, by the way, the reason why so many museum expositions are boring, it will always happen when the things inside are not “alive” and cannot be demonstrated in real use. Would be great if retro tech museums kept everything in working/demonstrable conditions. That'd be a mission!
- marapuru 5y ago
  Then this museum could be to your liking: https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/ https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/ Based in the Netherlands, they keep all devices in working condition and you can actually use them. Some on request.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  I once went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to see an exhibition of various digital, partially digital, or digital-related exhibits... What I remember the most was a room exhibiting several older websites on beige-boxes with CRT monitors, running Windows 95 and Netscape 3, and period-appropriate keyboards and mice. They were set up so that you could click around and browse around, and I even went so far as looking at the source. What I realized was that NN3 is a pretty capable browser, and so are many which came after them. Well, I decided to start testing my Web projects with every browser I could get my hands on, and I've discovered that, if you are very careful, you can make sites which work with 25+ years worth of browser software... And if I'm not on a strict schedule, browser quirks and compatibility are kind of fun! So I am sort of on the type of mission you're describing. I've set up the appropriate VMs, and whenever I'm working on the computer (pretty much every day haha) is like a visit to a historic browser exhibit. :) I also like writing in MS Word 97, so this makes it easy to paste the text into my blog afterwards.
cainxinth 5y ago
Those StarTacs are still such great looking devices. I had one of the later digital ones. It was comfortable to use and carry, and you always felt cool snapping it shut after a call.
gbil 5y ago
Interesting. I have quite a few old GSM phones which only recently I started powering up using a power supply - No hope to repair/clone batteries except maybe nimh ones - and in some I had issues recognizing a relatively modern SIM cards. Maybe I need to write a post with them powering up just of the fun of it
morpheos137 5y ago
I really wish somebody would make a modern phone I could install netbsd on.
int_19h 5y ago
NMT is the analog 1G standard that's still in use in a few places like Siberia, where the ability to cover a lot of area with a few towers comes in handy.

120 points by possiblelion 5y ago

snypher 5y ago

I wish everyone Medium author would just buy a .com and publish there. I'm not signing in to read text, sorry.

bserge 5y ago
Are there any advantages of using Medium over Wordpress.com?
- lmm 5y ago
  It has a much nicer editor and it looks better by default.
- marapuru 5y ago
  I think it's more fair to compare Medium to Ghost (https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/). It has all the tools for writing, publishing, maintaining subscriber databases and even payments. Self hosted or hosted by ghost. You have all the options.
- swiley 5y ago
  Man those are both terrible. Just use a pastebin if you really care so little.
maven29 5y ago
I'm not sure if things have changed but the paywall is completely optional if you're in the partner program, although it is an opt-out setting on each post you make (if you're in the partner program). You will lose out on discoverability through the medium platform if you do this. This affects search engine rankings as well. >To remove your story from the paywall, follow these instructions. Because your post will no longer be a part of our metered paywall, it will also no longer be recommended to readers, except those who follow you. >At the moment, you can only unmeter a post if you're in the Partner Program. We're working on adding functionality that gives writers who aren't in the Partner Program the option to unmeter previously metered posts. In the meantime, you can join the Partner Program to see the option to unmeter your posts.
cwales95 5y ago
I can usually get around the issue by opening a private tab or by disabling JavaScript before reopening the page. Seems they try to limit your number of views to Medium articles and try to force you to pay for the privilege of viewing more than a few. But I agree, most of the time I don't even bother reading after encountering the paywall.
dest 5y ago
Install NoScript browser extention, then ban medium.com
nonbirithm 5y ago
Remember the RSS reader that was posted recently which generated new feeds by scraping websites? I was thinking of making something similar for Fandom pages to remove all of the page bloat. The content is CC-licensed so I think it should work. The idea is that you'd have a website which acts as a proxy for every Wikia/Fandom site and forwards the content to a MediaWiki instance with a minimalist theme and renders it there. The main issue I came across was that it turns out the wikitext format is highly implementation-depdendent and you'd basically need a full installation of MediaWiki to convert it to HTML. I don't know about Medium's terms for its content, but maybe having a self-hosted proxy for personal use would work. I'm surprised the proxy idea hasn't come up much for taking control of content from websites with dark patterns.

logbiscuitswave 5y ago

> The sound quality is surprisingly good. Now I understand why people were complaining when they moved from AMPS to the first generation of GSM — the FM with 12 KHz modulation works actually well. I remember this. When digital voice became commonplace a frequent complaint was how people sounded like they were underwater from the compression. I don’t think it was until VoLTE became a thing that I can recall a really big increase in voice quality since the move to digital voice.

hulitu 5y ago
Voice quality is still an issue but now is driven by greed. Pack as much channels as possible to maximize profit.
jfrunyon 5y ago
It's amazing how much better an old, fuzzy copper landline was than my phone with VoLTE/VoIP turned off. (Or to someone else on a cell phone without either...)
- logbiscuitswave 5y ago
  I vividly remember the Sprint ads I would see on TV as a kid where they claimed their voice quality was so good that you could hear a pin drop. Their phone number was even “1-800-PIN-DROP”.

jazzido 5y ago

Listening to phone calls was trivial back then (early to mid 90s). Pretty much only rich people owned cellphones where I lived, and my unlocked Kenwood TH-78E handheld transceiver gave me access to their world :)

sherry-sherry 5y ago
Well then... spill. Tell us what tidbits you heard please :)
- rwmj 5y ago
  There was actually a musician who incorporated phone scanners into his work (under the appropriate stage name "Scanner"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud https://www.discogs.com/Scanner-Scanner/master/1767734 https://www.discogs.com/Scanner-Scanner/master/1767734
- caboteria 5y ago
  In the '90's I worked with a bunch of ham operators in a building next to Route 95. Perhaps the most interesting call that we heard was a guy who kept switching between his wife and his girlfriend. IIRC (it was many years ago) neither one was happy with him.
- geocrasher 5y ago
  Late 90's, I heard all sorts of stuff. The one that really stands out was a girls basketball coach who was in town for a tournament on the phone with a prostitute, talking to her about the need for discretion.
fogihujy 5y ago
Cordless phones were pretty common during that era, and they were just as trivial to listen into. Teenage me had a hard time looking the neighbors in the eyes afterwards though...
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago

rwmj 5y ago

https://archive.is/WI18G https://archive.is/WI18G

Animats 5y ago

They're really simple to talk to. I think the control channel is just a 1200 baud modem. SMS messages were originally intended as a way to send error messages (number out of service, etc.) to AMPS phones. Since they went over the control channel, they had to be very limited in length so as not to hog the shared control channel.

zikduruqe 5y ago
Ah... brings back memories. I can still hear the handoff message.. bizzip. I used to run an AMPS network back from 1991 to 1994. I miss the good old days; dailling NPA-NXX-7626 to reach a roamer, having to copy call records to magnetic tape to send off to GE for roaming calls, manually tuning combiners with my spectrum analyzer, calibrating audio levels on DS-0 cards using 1004 Hz tones, etc... it truly was a wireless telephone network.

jakecopp 5y ago

> Read the rest of this story with a free account. Oh how far Medium has fallen.

ChrisRR 5y ago
Was medium ever good?

fouc 5y ago

> This is, by the way, the reason why so many museum expositions are boring, it will always happen when the things inside are not “alive” and cannot be demonstrated in real use. Would be great if retro tech museums kept everything in working/demonstrable conditions. That'd be a mission!

marapuru 5y ago
Then this museum could be to your liking: https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/ https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/ Based in the Netherlands, they keep all devices in working condition and you can actually use them. Some on request.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
I once went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to see an exhibition of various digital, partially digital, or digital-related exhibits... What I remember the most was a room exhibiting several older websites on beige-boxes with CRT monitors, running Windows 95 and Netscape 3, and period-appropriate keyboards and mice. They were set up so that you could click around and browse around, and I even went so far as looking at the source. What I realized was that NN3 is a pretty capable browser, and so are many which came after them. Well, I decided to start testing my Web projects with every browser I could get my hands on, and I've discovered that, if you are very careful, you can make sites which work with 25+ years worth of browser software... And if I'm not on a strict schedule, browser quirks and compatibility are kind of fun! So I am sort of on the type of mission you're describing. I've set up the appropriate VMs, and whenever I'm working on the computer (pretty much every day haha) is like a visit to a historic browser exhibit. :) I also like writing in MS Word 97, so this makes it easy to paste the text into my blog afterwards.

cainxinth 5y ago

Those StarTacs are still such great looking devices. I had one of the later digital ones. It was comfortable to use and carry, and you always felt cool snapping it shut after a call.

gbil 5y ago

Interesting. I have quite a few old GSM phones which only recently I started powering up using a power supply - No hope to repair/clone batteries except maybe nimh ones - and in some I had issues recognizing a relatively modern SIM cards. Maybe I need to write a post with them powering up just of the fun of it

morpheos137 5y ago

I really wish somebody would make a modern phone I could install netbsd on.

int_19h 5y ago

NMT is the analog 1G standard that's still in use in a few places like Siberia, where the ability to cover a lot of area with a few towers comes in handy.