When I started driving at age 15 in 1996, my first mobile device for my parents to keep tabs on me was a transparent green Motorola beeper. It had a tiny screen on the top edge just big enough to show me the number that was beeping me. My mom would just send 303 for "mom", the 3s being like sideways Ms. I knew to call our landline at home if I got 303 on my beeper. Then, I'd have to hope I still had some quarters left in the center console of my car and find a payphone. My parents would give me a roll of quarters to keep in my car so I'd have no excuse to not call them back. When they first gave me the pager, I wore it tucked inside my jeans pocket with the clip sticking out on the outside. A teacher noticed it and called me to the dean because they thought I was dealing drugs or something. They didn't believe that my parents gave it to me. They confiscated it until they could talk to my mom. This video brought back so many memories I hadn't thought about in decades.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Awesome story, thanks so much for sharing that!
@combusean5 ай бұрын
The most popular girl at my junior high had TWO pagers because apparently she had problems with callers getting busy signals with one of them--i definitely remember both clips attached on either side of her short shorts. Why a girl who can't drive needs two pagers was probably more of a status symbol than anything else tho.
@UD503J5 ай бұрын
We were the same way! Our codes were our birthdays though, and we had other ones for 'call me' and ones to let us know who was going to be picking us up after clubs or sports after school.
The beeper pager is still widely used in restaurants, i recently go to massive food court where you can buy from different vendor, and most of them using beeper to call people that their food is ready, it's neat to see the simplest operation still used for 70 years.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
The old Post Office code still in use today!
@FoxMccloud425 ай бұрын
@@JanusCycleten years ago in school one of my classmates had a pagers with display because he was (and very likely still is) volunteer firefighter.
@dragonfireproductions7905 ай бұрын
fire service too
@D3M3NT3Dstrang3r5 ай бұрын
Pagers are also still very heavily used in medicine. Easy enough to use the hack rf and software to receive and decode the messages too.
@thej37995 ай бұрын
@@D3M3NT3Dstrang3r I was in the hospital recently and I found out they switched to apps a long time ago. I was shown whatever app they used when I asked, and it had a lot of functionality. the apps could connect with the many devices from patient rooms.
@SkyeHDD5 ай бұрын
I adore seeing old tech working again, those eureka moments when you get it working again is just ❤
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
It was awesome to see these working, glad you enjoyed this :)
@kirkanos39685 ай бұрын
Hell yea
@BillAnt5 ай бұрын
What's your 411? Ahh it's 911! Remember those codes? lol
@DrumWild5 ай бұрын
When I worked at UCLA Medical Center, I was impressed that pagers were still being used, and that I could go on an intraweb site, select a doctor's name by drop-down, and type in a page from my desk.
@kreuner115 ай бұрын
Yeah they used to use phones to control pagers but this is basically how it was done when there was a computer available
@flo18555 ай бұрын
In Germany some volunteer firefighters still use pagers. Though they are being replaced by apps slowly.
@slightlyevolved5 ай бұрын
I worked a hospital, and pagers were still in use for a huge reason, at 433MHz, those things could penetrate into places that 2-ish GHz cellular frequencies couldn't even dream of.... Such as the OR hallways/rooms, anywhere near radiology, or just the basement. All places that cell phones died. This was before Wifi calling, and you still can't get even CLOSE to relying on Wifi Calling.
@combusean5 ай бұрын
@@slightlyevolved There was also a brief period in the very early 2000s when pagers seemed like an anachronism but apparently they didn't cause problems with some of the medical equipment or didn't scare people (for lack of better term) like cell phones did. The risk of EMF was known and mitigated with pagers, probably not so as cellphones were just beginning to be in wider use. I very much remember having to turn off my phone in hospitals or otherwise not being permitted to use them everywhere back then.
@slightlyevolved5 ай бұрын
@@combusean I the early 2000's in the US, analog NAMPS cell phones were still very much a thing (the digital CDMA/TDMA, and to a lesser degree GSM, started to become more popular in sales around mid-2000. In 1999 it was $99 for a StarTac 3000, or $549 for a digital one...). With the much higher power output of NAMPS, I could see that being a worry. Also, even as late as 2007, I could tell when someone had a Nextel and was about to get a call, because it would make a CRT monitor image warp just before it rang.
@mikehibbett33015 ай бұрын
I designed pagers for Philips in the late 1980s. It was a great experience, gave me the tools for designing low power IoT devices 40 years later :)
@50shadesofbeige885 ай бұрын
I worked for a defense contractor up until about a year ago. I used to have to admin our pagers. They're very good for reliability in 2024.
@qwertykeyboard59015 ай бұрын
"defense" Sorry, I couldn't help it.
@JaredConnell5 ай бұрын
@@qwertykeyboard5901huh?
@dazednconfused313375 ай бұрын
D-FENS!
@BillAnt5 ай бұрын
Reliable as long as it's a two way to acknowledge the receipt, but one way papers were a hit and miss. If you happen to be in a weak signal area, you simply missed the page.
@sn0ren5 ай бұрын
Thanks for the shout out! And for the always great videos on retro tech.
@Digitaaliset5 ай бұрын
Those 80s pagers is iconic, everywhere in the whole world have the same memories about pagers. It is an evolution of communicators, see how we from simple one-way pagers to the modern mobile phone. Also best thing to pagers today is you able to send messages easy, very fun.
@BillAnt5 ай бұрын
In the early 2000's I was selling of Epox pagers in my wireless shop which were completely keypad programmable, both the frequency and capcode. Ahh the good 'ol days. :)
@Nathriel5 ай бұрын
The thing about pager POCSAG is that it usually transmits unencrypted and anyone within a few miles can pick up the signal and demodulate them to read the messages with an SDR. People who use them don't always know this. I've seen people using them to text themselves 2FA verifications thinking it's secure.
@SirDadbod3 ай бұрын
Those sidekicks and blackberries were amazing...followed by nextel chirp...i was gadget guy for real..
@mrfust5 ай бұрын
Last year, I got a bunch of old pagers working using a Raspberry Pi W Zero and RPITX. Definitely have a look at that. I’ve also started playing with Meshtastic too 👍🏻
@wdatkinson695 ай бұрын
I used to re-crystal pagers in high school as side job. We'd take trade-ins, I'd re-crystal and retune and off it went to the rental fleet. If memory serves, golay encoding yields a 6 digit cap code and pocsag is 7 digits....
@PushingFriend285 ай бұрын
Yes you're correct
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Maybe the first Motorola I took apart is golay.
@SirDadbod3 ай бұрын
Now that would be awesome video to watch...I'm fascinated with all that...my biggest fascination is knots right now
@kirkanos39685 ай бұрын
Never forget getting one in late 90's was only like 5 bucks a month and was like come on mom you will always no where i will be and such. Was great time to be alive she would page me then i would 1-800-collect tell her where i was or where to pick me up and when and hang up lol. dam i miss the 90's
@Ashu-ton_kuchha5 ай бұрын
As a bit of a POCSAG nerd myself I still carry a late 90s Motorola that still works ! Thankfully there’s still a few services that support major city’s in the US
@Ashu-ton_kuchha5 ай бұрын
Thanks for the great content! Always love the content
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
I appreciate the compliments, thanks.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
@@user-ni7tg5fg9k I would like to do more with really old phones.
@BillAnt19 күн бұрын
I still have an old Motorola POCSAG programming cradle for the Bravo series. I remember there was some weird cap-code limitation where multiple codes programmed into a single pager couldn't be sequential. Instead, they had to increment by a certain value. heh
@jiggybucksington5 ай бұрын
I’ll never forget when the Motorola flex pagers came out. My boy and I were the only two people in the hood with em. We stood next ti each other and I sent him a text. 5 minutes later he got it. Technology has come a long way!
@Tmm42s5 ай бұрын
The New South Wales Government are in the process of building a brand new paging network for the emergency services for the RFS, SES, Fire and other gov departments.. the network is designed to stay up during natural disasters. There are also a few networks in the US (eg Spok)… hospitals and some councils in Australia still run paging networks, you can find hundreds of them if you search the correct frequency ranges on the ACMA database.
@erintyres36095 ай бұрын
The FCC ID number should lead you to the FCC "OET" database, which should give you a lot of relevant information, and often a user manual.
@Clancydaenlightened5 ай бұрын
Pager still work nowadays They are still use because they are simple and can be reliable for long distance communication and use a separate network from cell phones and sms So pagers can still work when your phone has no signal Mainly nowadays emergency and on call services mainly use em along with a cell phone
@Clancydaenlightened5 ай бұрын
Atleast in USA You can still plug up a rotary phone to a landline and use it, if it's an actual landline Atleast last I checked pulse dial still worked since I could use dtmf or pulse on my cordless landline That's why you can just hook a speaker and mic, and short some wires on a dial up cord to call someone it also runs on it's own 70-90vac grid So if house loses power you can rig some LEDs for lighting using the phone
@prophetzarquon19225 ай бұрын
Pagers *_do_* use cellular service for connectivity, though... They just don't use "4G" etc LOL The only "pagers" that don't use cellular, are very short-range devices like those used at restaurants, which only work in close proximity to their base station
@bigmouthstrikesagain40565 ай бұрын
Ahhhh pagers... the meshtastics of the 80s
@kehet44095 ай бұрын
I clicked one link, and now KZbin is convinced that I want to see all pagers and beepers content there is. I'm not complaining, this is awesome
@evanbarnes99845 ай бұрын
I actually would love it if we would go back to using pagers. I think we've become way too insistent on immediate responses and communication from all people who have a method of contacting us. There are a lot of things I love about having a portable supercomputer in my pocket, but I don't think we actually have the mental architecture required to be in constant contact with people who aren't physically present and be healthy while we do it. The idea of getting a page and then being able to check that when you can reach a landline just sounds so nice and calm to me.
Thanks Budgiebrain994, I always appreciate your support.
@mauriziomonaco24585 ай бұрын
This was an excellent video, here in italy pagers were called "teledrin", from the word "tele", abbreviation of "telefono", (telephone), and "drin" because of the sound that they made. Everyone remembers that SIP, whitch was the only operator for pagers and phones here in italy, used frequencies that were very close to the ones used by our national television service back then, this caused that in lots of areas that were close to repeters while someone was reciving a pager message and someone else was watching television the television audio would be cut off and you would have been a able to hear the transmission audio instead.
@thelegend27123EU5 ай бұрын
I still use a pager every day to respond to emergency incidents with the fire department. We use the POCSAG with the LX4 & LX7. Its a great system because it’s very reliable and the reception is really good!
@wimwiddershins5 ай бұрын
Your order is ready, please return to the service counter. 😁
@robertfurr46785 ай бұрын
They actually have those at a local place I've been to a few times! They're little pucks with your order number displayed on an LCD that vibrate to indicate your order is ready to pick up, cool stuff.
@prophetzarquon19225 ай бұрын
Functionally very different; those have no service once you leave the immediate proximity of their base unit. Not the same as a cellular pager
@Jpeglism5 ай бұрын
is it really cellular? the frequency looks quite low, more like fm range. @@prophetzarquon1922
@fuzzix5 ай бұрын
Great stuff - nice work! I worked in a pager message call centre in the 90s - absolute nightmare! We had a target of at least 600 calls a day, each one lasting seconds ... the occasional call lasting up to a minute while you explained what a pager is and took some abuse for it. This brings it all back! 😉
@BillAnt5 ай бұрын
"My beeper ain't working...." - ahh the specifics of that complaint. lol
@fuzzix5 ай бұрын
@@BillAntProbably because the network was on the way out, and we couldn't be bothered fixing the downed radios ...
@JohnCompton15 ай бұрын
I had the Pageboy ll back in the early 80's...the caller was able to leave a short voice message, but honestly the audio was often so garbled I ended up calling in anyway...to my surprise I learned that they are still in use today by many fire brigades, due to the excellent coverage..Thanks so much for sharing!
@UD503J5 ай бұрын
Ah dude, this brings me back. Somewhere in a box in the attic, are a couple of the beepers I had when I was in middle & high school. My whole family had them in the mid '90's, because the cell service at the time was extremely expensive and a handheld mobile wouldn't even last on standby for a whole day. At my first job after high school, I worked in an office supply store and sold the first texting and two-way pagers. Skytel I think, and I probably have one of the very 90's business-centric sales brochures somewhere. We also sold PalmPilots, and I remember someone sold a kit that allowed you to get pages from your Palm device on them.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
The late 90s were an amazing time :)
@AndyFletcherX315 ай бұрын
This brings back memories. In 1982-1983 I was working on the design for the PG32 POCSAG decoder chip. 2800 gates in standard cell. Design toolchain was slow. Manual netlist entry and many hours looking at printouts on green/white paper. Happy days.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Wow! very early days for POCSAG there
@madscientist158084 ай бұрын
In Germany, we still have a nationwide paging network on 466 MHz called e*Cityruf, and it's VERY active. Most of the activity is telemetry data and status messages from stuff likes pumps, servers, etc. Great video btw. Always nice seeing old tech brought back to life. I'm actually currently trying to build a POCSAG transmitter and simple pager that uses the 433 MHz ISM band, just for the fun of it^^
@Sb1295 ай бұрын
My Grandpa had a pager back in the day and I do remember in the early Y2Ks that cell phone kiosks in the Mall had pagers. They interested me slightly but I ofc was already used to seeing people with PDAs and cellular phones. Pagers were just a bit before my time but it was cool to see the march of technology in real time. The other way I knew about pagers was the Palm VII, VIIx and the i705. These Palm models had a built in pager and you could sign up with Palm and access the web! It sounded pretty wild. It used the Mobitex Pager network. Idk how it worked but it did. So normal Palm applications are in .prc format, these web enabled applets were .pqa and were stuff like email, stocks & weather.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Those Palm models with radios are really interesting, I'm keen to try one out some day.
@prophetzarquon19225 ай бұрын
The Palm Treo was arguably the most multifunctional smartphone ever. Had hardware features we can't even get today What I might miss most though, was the rounded square 4pin charging connector you could just knock undone without damaging it!
@oktxv81865 ай бұрын
I am so glad I have stumbled upon this channel, it is rare these days to see someone as passionate about technology and its' history.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Good to have you here, thanks for watching!
@bjornkeizers5 ай бұрын
Back when I was a teen, beepers were all the rage. In the mid to late 90’s, few people had mobile phones and a teen couldn’t really afford one. These were a reasonable way to at least reach someone if you needed them. They even made beepers targeted to the teen demographic here in the Netherlands. I never carried one myself as I got a phone pretty early.
@ditroia27775 ай бұрын
I had exposure to these through my dad who had beepers and pagers. He worked on call for the E&WS. Naturally they were all Motorola models.
@zakofrx5 ай бұрын
Love how back then the selling point was the privacy of beepers.. Now they have convinced most to not worry about people knowing everything about you..
@munnsie1005 ай бұрын
Great, now I have a ridiculously strong urge to own a functional pager for no reason. Thanks for another great video, you never disappoint!
@prophetzarquon19225 ай бұрын
Good luck connecting it to the cellular networks of today's US...
@racerboyeddie5 ай бұрын
i love your videos so much, can't wait to see you play with meshtastic with us
@PeterBellefleur5 ай бұрын
That first Motorola you were playing with looks old enough that it might not be pocsag. Golay was the signaling format that was precursor to Pocsag and a lot of early tone only pagers were Golay. Also, changing the frequency on most non synthesized pagers requires not just changing the crystal, but retuning the IF stage, which often means replacing some laser trimmed capacitors with adjustable ones.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Wow, Golay. I hadn't considered that possibility, thanks. I'm still learning about radio and there are many things I don't know. I have seen there are NEC replacement pager crystals available for different frequencies. Is it possible NEC designed these pagers to work on different frequency ranges with just a crystal change? How do amateur radio enthusiasts do it?
@PeterBellefleur5 ай бұрын
@@JanusCycle It would likely work somewhat with just a crystal change, but the sensitivity would be hurt quite a bit. I worked for a pager company in the 90s-2000s and re-crystaled and recapped a lot of Motorola and NEC pagers, we did try just a crystal swap when we first got started but they would never perform that well, so we ended up getting the entire ramsey electronics rig to tune them properly....depending on the RF board there were 1 to 3 IF stages that needed to be tweaked, there are test points on the board and IIRC you have to watch for 455khz with an o-scope or frequency counter and tune it for the strongest signal. There are pagers out there that do use PLL tuners and can simply be programed for a new frequency, but to be honest, by the time these came around, they simply were not as well built as the Crystal stuff, nor did they seem as reliable.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
@@PeterBellefleur Thank you! I really appreciate the level of detail you provided here. The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know :) I also now have a new appreciation for the crystal pagers over the synthesized oscillators in programmable frequency pagers.
@meltysquirrel29195 ай бұрын
@14:55 pager doing like an electric football game had me laughing 😂 I used to run a pager-based school zone flasher system. The server would dial a phone number to page the flashers on or off. Typically it did this twice - once just ahead of schedule and once at about the scheduled time to turn it on and at the scheduled time and slightly after to turn it off. Since there was no acknowledgement it was do it twice with fingers crossed. 🙃
@radry1005 ай бұрын
The pagers I know from the 90s had sim cards and when someone called it showed the number. Some could receive SMS too.
@EportChris5 ай бұрын
Used to love watching tomorrow's world. Some things they got spot on, some things wildly wrong 😂 Thanks mate, love the effort and care that goes into crafting these videos 😊
@TeslaTales595 ай бұрын
Great video! I remember carrying the type with the LC display. Later I carried the type that could display whole sentences!
@jamiedoesstuff48775 ай бұрын
Your writing and editing skills have improved so much since I started following your channel. No doubt you'd make excellent documentaries about everything and anything that comes to you. Keep up the great work!
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
I really appreciate hearing that. I really enjoy exploring tech and I've been working hard at learning how to bring that experience out on video.
@Iron_Condorr5 ай бұрын
❤ Calm & relaxing voice. Always interesting tech being reviewed. It's one of my favorite channels 😍
@LeeZhiWei82195 ай бұрын
Dude! My Meshtastic board is coming in tomorrow. So excited to use it. Man, i love your stuff! Keep up the good work dude.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
I hope you enjoy your new Meshtastic node :)
@LeeZhiWei82195 ай бұрын
@@JanusCycle absolutely dude. I hope to perhaps comms with you one day man, if long distance comms works out soon haha.
@confusinggameplays16875 ай бұрын
Another great upload from Janus! I've always been interested in pagers.
@faxezu5 ай бұрын
I still carry a pager on me all the time, it's a Swissphone Boss 925. I'm a voluntary firefighter in Germany and this is how most of us get called into action. Already digital and encrypted but currently there is a switch towards the Swissphone s.Quad. They use the Tetra Radio network which is also used for all of the emergency radio services in Germany.
@Marfprojects5 ай бұрын
In the Netherlands, we still use Pagers for the whole country for the emergency services called P2000. they use capcodes for the stations.
@gregrich915 ай бұрын
glad you're so KEEN to tinker with these, was fun watching!
@anidnmeno5 ай бұрын
you know its gonna be a good one when you come home to a fresh Janus drop
@BenJonesVideographer15 күн бұрын
I honestly love the idea of a pager. Especially a 2 way one, possibly encrypted too. Im sick of all these different apps to communicate with people. Give me and my close friends and family a pager and lets go back 🎉
@sfelton89435 ай бұрын
Your content is such quality Janus. I get excited every time you're in my feed.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Awesome, I'm pleased to hear that :)
@JohnMedved5 ай бұрын
All your page are belong to us. Lol. Great video. I had all of these in the 80s/90s. The two-way Motorola pager was awesome. Texting in the 90's!
@OmegaWolf7475 ай бұрын
I remember wanting a beeper as a kid because they always looked so cool in the movies.
@DatamasterCorporation5 ай бұрын
That first Motorola pager you showed is very similar in design and construction as their System Saber, and Astro Saber public safety radios that were available at the time. It actually looks to reuse the belt clip that was optional for the radio. The sabers have two set screws on the bottom, and when loosened the electronics slide out of the housing just like that pager. Seems like they were designed in conjunction, or the pager was the inspiration for the design of the Saber.
@threeMetreJim5 ай бұрын
Pagers are still used in the UK for hospitals, fire service (in some areas), status reports from some systems, vetinary surgeons and some other services. Usuall found around 150 MHz and some UHF frequencies. I used to watch messages using old software called pdw and a radio scanner, but you can use an SDR too with a virtual audio cable.
@greglipschitz5 ай бұрын
I loved my Motorola LX4. Brilliant device.
@tomashubelbauer5 ай бұрын
Very cool gadgets. I've never seen a pager in person, they weren't really a thing in my neck of the woods in their era, or at least as far as I can tell. It is interesting to see how they worked and how they were configured. Thanks for another great video!
@deathdogg05 ай бұрын
As far as I know there's no one else doing this kind of retro pager goodness on youtube so thank you!
@alexblue69915 ай бұрын
I had a few back in the day one for every member of my family members
@niceguyjoe5 ай бұрын
I loved my pager. I had a Swatch watch pager that got me through university.
@muppetpaster5 ай бұрын
I must have had literally hundreds of these things over time...Also the big bricks by Motorola, with the small led single digit fisheyed red numerical display
@mwethereld5 ай бұрын
I have my apollo from my tame as an ambulance officer, it is programmable with many capcodes and freqs from the unit itself. id love a POCSAG encoder so i can setup a local area pager for my family. thanks for giving me the insight into the Hack RF. I decode it all the time here from a Uniden Bearcat with a Mod Tap and decode two freq at both 512 and 1200 baud, 2400 is rare here, also decode MDT from the ambulance, you get some really interesting stuff on the air!
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
great to hear from a POCSAG enthusiast :)
@cocusar5 ай бұрын
Amazing! Literally amazing. I think there was a kids toy that had a screen and a RF modem, but I forgot its name, I know it was Russian (or from some Slavic country). You should have a look at it as well!
@CasioMaker5 ай бұрын
The Cybiko? I heard about those a few years ago and they seemed to be quite the thing for the era they were released.
@mothmansmemeticwarehouse64785 ай бұрын
Cybiko!
@CCNeutson5 ай бұрын
What a blast from the past. I had a Motorola alphanumeric pager. I think back then I spent 9.99 a month or maybe 19.99 I just don't remember. Thank you for bringing me back. You got my subscription.
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Awesome, I hope you enjoy some of the other videos as well.
@danielmewes5 ай бұрын
This is awesome! I have several NEC 21A, as well as several other POCSAG and I think one FLEX pagers in my collection. Was cool to see the NEC programming software! I might try to revive some of my pagers using the method you show here some day...
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
The NEC 21A is a very cool model. I wish I had one. And easy to program.
@dunxy5 ай бұрын
Not 30 years! I was a courier up until sometime in 2000 and we received jobs on a pager with basic monochrome display. IIRC it was a Motorola.
@JohnWatkinsUK5 ай бұрын
I work in telecoms, there is still lots of paging transmission equipment in service!
@AngadAnand13 күн бұрын
14:00 you are a man of culture.
@JanusCycleКүн бұрын
;)
@valomestari5 ай бұрын
Well, this was a fun surprise. Your content keeps throwing me back to my youth, so happy to support, even a little. Thanks!
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
I'm very glad you are enjoying the channel. Thank you so much for your support.
@G4t0c5 ай бұрын
Fascinating
@DMahalko5 ай бұрын
Around 1993 I knew someone with an imported FM radio from Japan which uses different frequency bands than in the USA. It could tune in and listen to USA pager audio transmissions.
@nisserot5 ай бұрын
I've been monitoring POCSAG traffic in Sweden for years. I modified two Motorola pagers to use as dedicated receivers. I also wrote my own POCSAG decoder for Linux. Sadly this past year I've noticed more and more encrypted pages (128-bit IDEA encryption from what I've been able to figure out). I guess the paging company is aiming to transition all pagers to encrypted varieties. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
@prophetzarquon19225 ай бұрын
Well, with the right ASICs...
@lelanddyke83865 ай бұрын
It's not always as simple as just swapping the crystal, a lot of the support circuitry will likely be assuming the crystal is what it is
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
This is the kind of thing I need to learn about, thanks. I have also heard about some hams dropping the frequency of pagers from 148 MHz down into the 2 meter band. But I'm not sure if they were crystal controlled.
@BrekMartin5 ай бұрын
@@JanusCycleIt’s as simple so long as you aren’t moving it far from the frequency the receiver was intended for, or it will be outside of the bandwidth of the receiver’s front end filters. A ham would typically move these VHF units down to the 2 meter amateur band so then you can transmit to them with power behind it.
@fazejohncenachristogamerfaze5 ай бұрын
@@JanusCycle 2m is 144-148mhz, so i guess its pretty close. Time to pass your liscence haha
@vk3hau5 ай бұрын
@@fazejohncenachristogamerfaze absolutely!
@metallurgico5 ай бұрын
bring the whole 80s back!
@CB-od5dy5 ай бұрын
All I can picture in my head when I see these is the GTA original soundtrack playing in polyphonic while I'm speeding around in my red Banshee 😭
@CB-od5dy5 ай бұрын
Born 96 so that's my only exposure to pagers (GTAIII)
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Great game :)
@kaitlyn__L22 күн бұрын
I still feel vindicated when I see an alphanumeric pager (or even a bidirectional pager). In 2001-03 my brother still used his pager even though he had a phone. But he insisted pagers were only numeric, and that for text you needed a phone. I told him up and down I’d seen texting capable ones on the TV, but he said they were probably phones that only looked like pagers haha. I guess all his pals only had the numeric pagers. He kept his pager for a few years after getting a phone because the signal coverage was better, or something. I seem to recall it was gone by 04 though.
@wasjosh5 ай бұрын
I used to program these in the back of my dad’s shop as a kid. The software and hardware wasn’t too bad to use, later on when he started selling cell phones we needed binders full of programming guides ha.
@repatch435 ай бұрын
My first job I had an alphanumeric pager. There was a email to pager gateway our provider had, so I created scripts that would page me the results of day long compiles so I'd know if I was out for lunch or something that my job failed and I needed to get back early. Fun stuff!
@stoner13375 ай бұрын
I don't understand anything about technology and I don't even know English very well, but your channel and video are very interesting and always bring me a lot of nostalgia and flashbacks, it should be emphasized that you choose such music that creates an atmosphere
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
I'm really glad you enjoyed this and appreciate the music.
@GingerNingerGames5 ай бұрын
I like the idea of pagers better than carrying a phone for some strange reason. I mean, my dumbphone is essentially a two way pager that can do calls, but something about one way only is interesting too. That said, I think I like it because it's simple and it's not constantly trying to get my attention, only when I'm needed.
@prophetzarquon19225 ай бұрын
And those two-way pagers with GPS & autorespond features, would be more responsive (& more private) than any "modern" Airtag type asset tracking devices
@GingerNingerGames5 ай бұрын
@@prophetzarquon1922Air tags rely on a network of apple phones with location services and bluetooth turned on 24/7 to even work, you can get GPS trackers that are exactly what you described, they're basically a phone that sends you GPS updates when parameters are met. You can even call them and it'll auto answer and feed the microphone to you so you can hear what's happening. How useful that is for anything but spying I don't know.
@jan_harald5 ай бұрын
we should have more of this sorta retro tech... turn off all notifications, and use beepers to signal "I want you to do something"! and yes, as been said, some food places use stuff very much like this, it's great, because nowdays you can make 'em super cheap, AND they work well
@nblr23425 ай бұрын
Kudos for getting the NEC programming software working! When I tried, i probably oversaw the inverted TTL mode. Looks like I should give it another go :-)
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
That was really difficult to work out. But easy once I knew what was going on.
@brianheinz89385 ай бұрын
I’m the telecom guy for a county government in the US. I still have a couple of departments that use pagers.
@buckykattnj5 ай бұрын
Brings back memories... in '94, one of my responsibilities was a telephony application I wrote that would page people with overdue bills... and they could call back in and get their balance from our OS/2 DB/2 server or get a small reprieve from being shut off. I had a basket full of various pagers on my desk, and every morning and afternoon, I would make sure they beeped and booped on schedule. We had dozens of programing tools for every flavor of pager... most of them where unreasonably finicky. We would open up pagers and unsolder/swap components... and had a device similar to your HackRF... except that it was the size of a large desktop PC. We had kinda ghetto franchises in 20 cities... and probably had most of the drug dealers and prostitutes from the area in our database, so we CONSTANTLY had the police stopping by with subpoenas. Fun times, LOL!
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Awesome story, thanks!
@olddisneylandtickets5 ай бұрын
As a late 50's IT guy this was infinitely relatable. At the end the pager era we had Motorola Skytel pagers, I still have mine but the weird proprietary battery has passed on. Awesome video, thank you!!!
@BeatboxNorwich5 ай бұрын
I intercept pager messages here in the UK on 158.350mhz using SDR software and a program called PDW. Some very interesting messages come in very frequently!
@threeMetreJim5 ай бұрын
Have you noticed the lie about not knowing where a mobile is calling from (police always say that) if the caller doesn't know where they are? Looking like this: "Mobile Phone Coordinates, Closest Area Detected.." - Triangulation used by the emergency services.
@BeatboxNorwich5 ай бұрын
I don't know where you in the world but it's common knowledge over here and it's not pin-point. They can get a general area which is enough to say 'you were in the vicinity' if it was a piece of evidence I suppose. Sorry if I repeated back what you just told me lol
@cgarby5 ай бұрын
Thanks!
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
I appreciate this, thank you.
@pap3rw85 ай бұрын
When I worked at Big Name Hospital we still had pagers through 2016. Not sure if it was a campus-only private system or wide-area cellular.
@EdgeOfYesterday5 ай бұрын
Love that vibrate setting. Back when you could feel it.
@Betruet5 ай бұрын
This video was beautiful, brilliant and very engaging. I've just been on a Meshtastic search and really want to get some nodes going. I love the Ideal of the 2 way radio in the form of an 80s pager. thanks so much for sharing your journey with these iconic devices
@ExploringNew15 ай бұрын
These old things are way more interesting than modern stuff. These days it's just a cheap computer blob inside a cheap plastic box
@richjamjam5 ай бұрын
Best retro tech youtuber!
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
:)
@rhysbaker25955 ай бұрын
Damn, posted 2 hours ago! Glad I found it. You earned yourself a subscribe, sir
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
Awesome, thanks!
@FurbleFawks5 ай бұрын
An excellent video as always!
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
well, thank you :)
@rachelannkrueger76385 ай бұрын
When I go my endocrinologist appointment I get a pager beeper when I and other patients get a one. It's used for doctor to page the patient when they are ready for paintent
@gman830905 ай бұрын
It also goes with the same with hospitals as well they still use Pages as well as any emergency service from POLICE to Ambulance and fire
@devrim-oguz5 ай бұрын
This makes me want to buy a pager
@TKTmon5 ай бұрын
16:19 YES! I've been studying a lot on meshtastic lately, and while some of the devices I've seen have some pretty alright designs, nothing tops the og pagers. maybe, just maybe one of the supported meshtastic boards/modules has the processing power and available io to work as a guts swap for a two-way pager that retains the factory display and keypad.
@prophetzarquon19225 ай бұрын
What annoys me, is that without a regional cellular service to provide connectivity, we'll never get more than a few miles range. Municipal mesh networks could solve this by supplanting corporate-run cellular services; if laws permitting us to do that, were passed... It works great where it's done at all
@JanusCycle5 ай бұрын
I do love this idea.
@glenwoofit5 ай бұрын
I use a pager today worldwide using DAPNET with Amateur Radio. I can sent a page via the App to any pager or to many pagers. You just need to be a radio amateur and be in range of a transmitter. I use a Pi-Star Jumbo spot.
@dougle035 ай бұрын
I was a member of the UK's Skegness RNLI Lifeboat crew and remember my Motorola tone only pager back in the mid 90's. I wonder what they use now? No doubt it's just a phone app... Back then they also use to set off two air burst maroons to signal to local crew; don't think they do that anymore either..