EEVBlog #243 - Vintage Brick Mobile

[sacherjj]

I wonder if the soldering of the coax braid near the antenna is to generate a better ground plane for the antenna.

[LEECH666]

More like Dino-Tech now .

[IanB]

It would be fun to send one of those old phones in a time machine back to the 1940's and watch people's eyes pop out of their heads. Send an iPhone back and they would be speechless...

[Uncle Vernon]

It would be fun to send one of those old phones in a time machine back to the 1940's and watch people's eyes pop out of their heads. Send an iPhone back and they would be speechless...

That's kind of the opposite to what Nokia have been doing for the some time. Who'd have known half a decade ago that they were then sending old phones into their future?

[vk6zgo]

It would be fun to send one of those old phones in a time machine back to the 1940's and watch people's eyes pop out of their heads. Send an iPhone back and they would be speechless...

Send an Engineer back,& he would learn to design from first principles!

[mariush]

I was watching the episode last night and I figured... why not check the insides of my first phone, which happens to be a Motorola?

So here, you go... a Motorola V2288 from around 2001 (the plastic case says on the insides June 2000) which back then for me it was cool for two reasons:  it had FM radio built in and had these separate batteries that are ALMOST R6/AA batteries (with some tweaking I think someone could use AA batteries instead of the original ones which had no bulging at the positive end.  (the original ones were 650mH ni-mh batteries)

The phone probably still works but batteries are a pain to find and the original and a spare set died on me because the charging jack got corroded or contacts inside bent and the batteries would always be charged partially. You can actually see the charge jack is gone already from the left bottom side.

So without further talking, here's the insides...

[G7PSK]

I have an un-used HT power supply from a PYE Cambridge or Westminster radio phone of 1950's era.  Its about 150mm long and 90mm diameter.It is a rotary converter and  produces 250/300 volts DC from 12 volt DC to run the HT of the valves  12 V brushes at one end of the armature and 250/300 at the other.I have not weighed it but it must be nearly 3 KG. That really old technology. I used to have a complete phone which came in three parts the control and handset unit which went inside the car the handset was just like an old phone handset from the 1940's other than a transmit paddle then there was the power amp and then the power supply units that mounted in the boot. I was told that when you pressed talk the car would slow down by 5 mile an hour due to the amount of power used. I gave the whole thing to a museum a few years back now.

[siliconmix]

I wonder if the soldering of the coax braid near the antenna is to generate a better ground plane for the antenna.

i'll go with that sach deffo

[LaurenceW]

I guess we tend to major on the chips, but I quite admire the way the use of plastic materials and mouldings has also come on in leaps and bounds. Dave mentions it briefly, but there's a shed load of development in the design and plastic moulding tools, too, I'd guess.

OK, so now fast-forward 20 years... multilayer devices "printed" by 3D printers that don't have screws, because you can't dismantle them? A mind-port rather than a keyboard, because you only need to picture the person you want to contact, and the phone does the rest? Low power electronics and batteries that last the life of the phone, so don't need recharging? Predictive speech algorithms that finish your sentences? "Hello darling, I'm going to be Late/Famous/knackered/Rich/Dead..." hmm, some further work required, there!

[12AX7]

[IanB]

I'll see your mobile phone and raise you an IBM PC:



I was working for IBM when the original PC was released. I can therefore remember the era BPC (Before PC) -- and I've watched the evolution of the IBM PC from the very beginning. It's funny how for a long time there were "IBM compatible" computers, but now there are only "Windows compatible" computers. Poor IBM. They changed the world and now they are reduced to charging huge consultancy fees to have wet behind the ears graduates come in and do simple tasks for huge hourly rates... 

[Pat Pending]

and where it all started

[Bored@Work]

and where it all started
...
Tomorrow's World: Mobile Phone 13 September 1979 - BBC

Not really. Already in 1950 a trial mobile phone network was set up in Stockholm. With something like five users. A few years earlier there was a primitive half-duplex mobile phone network in the US by AT&T. But the next action happened in northern Europe. In 1956 two commercial networks were started in Stockholm and Gothenburg. In total something like 125 users, although planed for 1000 users. More and newer types of commercial networks were installed during the '60th, and beginning of the '70th in Sweden. And in 1977 the US had the first simple cellular network. Others, e.g. the Germans had automatic, non-cellular systems about 1972.

In parallel several Nordic countries were planing and building the big-bang of mobile networks, the Nordic Mobile Telephone network (NMT). A commercial, automatic, cellular, pan-Nordic mobile telephone network system. NMT was successfully demonstrated in 1978, one year before that BBC video with that prototype, and NMT went into commercial operation in 1981, after something like 15 years of development.

In 1983 the US had developed the American *cough* Advanced *cough* Mobile Phone System (AMPS). But only in 1985 the UK got their first mobile phone cellular network, based on an evolved US AMPS system called TACS. By that time GSM was already under development for three years.

[Caffeine]

There is a nice interview on theverge with Marty Cooper, who designed these Motorola phones:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/20/2811861/marty-cooper-interview

[im_a_human]

Technophone - one of the first mobile phone companys in the UK.

[yanir]

I've been working on project to recreate an 80's Brick Phone to use as a Blue Tooth Handset. When Dave did this tear down I was in the middle of the design. I'm close to finished and it's going to be a kickstarter project. Check out my site if your interested/curious.

www.shisalabs.com

Some Renderings attached. I'll post photos of circuit boards and 3d prints soon.

[yanir]

Hi, well I launched the project on Kickstarter, you can see it here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shisalabs/80s-retro-brick-bluetooth-handset

I also posted some more photos of the 3d printed parts in a new post here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects-designs-and-technical-stuff/80s-brick-phone-with-blueooth!/

hope you check it out

Yanir

[Spectreman]

Nice phone !  I collect analogue Motorola phones myself.
The service test mode in these old Motorolas is interesting.
Can use them as a full duplex two way in test mode, but the phones will never directly talk to each other.
Have to use a scanner & a UHF transceiver.
Actually talking on one of these old phones is interesting !
I do intend to buy a proper AMPS test set one day.
Cheers, Chris.