This video was BRILLIANT! The title card you made was spot on. So simple and yet it fit perfect! I love that one of the ladies said "the most intelligent mobile phone" she didn't call it a smartphone, but still :) I don't know if you care about this aspect, but when you said "I'm even more excited" after discovering the eeprom, you did not sound convincing. Since I was also excited, I'm certain you were too, just didn't sound like it. I have never heard of this phone or brand. Everybody skips from the Motorola brick phone to the startac usually. I was surprised just by seeing the title honestly. I didn't think there was a mobile made in the 80's that was pocketable. For reference, I am the same age as this phone. The effort you put into this video really shows. Just the research you must have done, wow! Then you presented it very well. Did you figure out the mystery of the solder across those processor pins? I was afraid something bad would happen when you connected the battery. I'm very shocked the phone still works as well as it does. Thank for sharing this true marvel of 80's era electronic engineering!
When I made this video I recorded the entire disassembly and powering up process. I try very hard to capture my genuine experience during this time. Then I wrote the story script with all the things I've learned, either in full sentences or bullet points depending on the section and record the story of my experience. The final edit is a combination of the two recordings. The moment of eprom reveal was in my head a lot and if I've been unable to capture and present that authentically then that's entirely on me. The aim of this channel is to explore technology and connect with people as I do this. Which is why I'm humbled by the feedback I get from everyone and why I love your comment in particular. You are helping me to grow and improve. Thank you for sticking with me as I learn to make better videos. I do find it really hard sometimes to properly express myself emotionally. But I also feel that I'm making progress with this over time. And from the wonderful responses I'm getting from everyone. Thank you all so much. I learned during making this video that the eprom was how the software was upgradable in this phone. I'm now even more keen to read the contents. Though it will need to be desoldered from the board to do that. That could take some time to set up. The bridged solder pins are very weird indeed. I'm keen to look further into these things in a second part one day. In the meantime I've got a couple of new videos in the works and I hope something good comes out.
@@JanusCycle idk, I thought the eeprom reveal was done well aside from my previous feedback. I knew exactly what it was when I saw it, so my perspective may be different from someone that didn't. You did an excellent job of describing *why* it was exciting. It was just that one sentence that your words didn't seem to match the emotion. I also LOVED how well you described the nature of the board, double sided surface mount, 12 layers. I knew that was uncommon for the year, but you helped me understand just HOW special and uncommon it was for the time. I have trouble expressing emotions too. Doing videos really helped me with that. The biggest thing I learned is that the camera works against you. For some reason, when I smile or sound angry, I never appeared to be expressing as much emotion as I thought I was. So I started exaggerating whatever emotion it was I was trying to express. Oddly that made me appear to be expressing myself more naturally in the video. I think for the most part your speaking rhythm and cadence match the subject matter and 'feel' of your videos. Your voice is easy to understand and pleasant to my ears. For my american ears, your accent is almost melodic. I'm excited to see what you upload next!
@@JanusCycleyou should be able to read the programming with a clip lead set. Without desolding if you remove the battery. My guess that is how they would do programming too. If it was strictly programmed from the base, they would have done the erase from there as well. I was fixing cellphones in the early 2000 time frame, but I was playing with Amateur Radio before that, a 12 layer board is mind boggling complex for a decade before then. Techtronics would have been pushing their design software right up to the limit. 6 layer fab was much more common at least in the computer market though some places did more. It occurs to me that the RF modules separated by the battery may and likely at least 1 layer in the board was used for additional RFI reduction/isolation. I wouldn't know what to do with the information, but maybe you can find a technology service who can Xray it once you get the software backed up.
@@RowanHawkins I have since found out that the Eprom is sitting in very low profile socket pins and easy to remove. I think I was quite wrong about it being programmed in circuit. This will be in part 2. I now need to find a good Eprom reader/programmer. I am going to desolder those RF modules as well. Great suggestions in your comment as well, thank you.
I was the engineer that designed one of the application specific chips used in the PC105 series pocket phones, both AMPS ad TACS variants. I went on to be the worldwide software support engineer for the AMPS variant.
Hi Andy, thanks for stopping by. It's an honour to have you here. I hope you enjoyed the video. I understand I made some mistakes in this video. I intend on correcting these in a part two. If you have any stories you would like to share, I would be very interested in hearing them. Either here or you can also email me if you wish.
@@JanusCycle One thing that might not be so obvious was that some of the variants of the main PCBs had buried vias on them. This was pretty revolutionary at the time, and hugely expensive as well.
@@JanusCycle Me again... The Service mode was designed by me as an aid in field testing. My original version was a lot more comprehensive than the version that we eventually released on to customers phones though. the service techs out in the field absolutely loved this feature as it allowed them to have far more visibility of the system than any of the competitors phones gave them.
Hi Andy, fellow Techophonist from a short while later👋 IIRC the processor was a standard chip, not in one of the gate arrays? Hitachi 6303? CMOS version of the Motorola 6800 family. Under the "GL" sticker perhaps.
I was 14 in '89 and went to a police auction and ended up buying one of these for £5... I couldn't get it activated but used to flex and walk around with it. This was when a mobile, especially in the hands of a child, would still turn heads. Little did I know, they were all thinking 'what an idiot' 😂
Haha Well if you still got that phone you might could bring it to this man to repair it,only problem is he sounds like as if he got sex with his wife,damnit.
This video brought back some memories. I was a very junior engineer at Technophone back then; I left in 1989. The back lighting wasn’t great but it worked better than on your example - maybe that’s something to do with age! The battery pack comes off much more easily if you unclip the front cover first.
excellent video, thanks a lot! In case you're not aware yet, the osmocom-analog project allows you to build open source SDR base stations for a variety of analog cellphone systems, including AMPS, TACS, MTS, IMTS, NMT, ...
Even as “the first pocketable cell phone” it’s still somehow the most 1980’s thing imaginable. It’s like a walkie talkie crossbred with a phone born in a Radio Shack store.
Thank you for a lovely engineering history perspective. The 12 layer PC board blew me away. Just a tip, if you ever get a chance to acquire an Oki 900 handset, it truly was the hacker's/phone phreak's handset of the AMPS telephony era. The bottom connector of the phone exposed a LOT of the bus. I think it even carried some of the CPU lines. The internal service menus were superbly comprehensive. Some people reflashed them with custom firmware, but there was an almost turnkey plug-in integration with the HP 200LX MS-DOS palmtop and some scanning software that turned it into an impressively powerful and portable scanning platform.
I wold love an Oki 900, that is a legendary phone in hacking circles. I didn't know it worked so well with the HP 200LX, another legendary device. What an amazing combination that is.
The second that sticker came off with the window visible I gasped and started panicking the eeprom was getting erased. Glad to hear it needs a focused UV light.
This was also my reaction as soon as Insaw the window! I'd only learned about those in class, never encountered one. I'm glad to know it takes a focused UV beam.
I think the "eprom's" memory is UV erasable. The "eeprom" or as you computer nerds like to call it, e-squared prom (😂😆🤣) is Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory. Also, I didn't know surface mount was a thing in 1985.
I was Working a Trade show back in the 90’s, we had a Liebert Deluxe on the Floor, Powered up the Controls with 115 Volt Cheater Cord. These Japanese came up and started taking close up Flash Pictures of the Board(s). I got into a tussle with them. Yes, they wounded the EPROM. Luckily it wasn’t enough to destroy it working’s at the show.
What an incredible thing this is, a real feat of miniaturisation for the mid 1980's that I'd never heard of before now. Thanks for showing off these things and giving a demo of not just their insides, but also the work you put in to bringing them back to life as well.
I used to fix these back in the late 1980's. I still have that exact model on display in my office (just for fun - to show visitors). I also have half dozen old eproms in a black UV proof case (try to keep yours out of any light sources or the data may get corrupted - hence the funny characters you are starting to see on yours). The eproms could be programmed with anyone's phone number and their ESN, then you could make phone calls on their account. A huge cyber security risk by today's standards, allowing technicians that kind of power. But getting hold of the ESN/phone number pair that the carrier had allocated to a specific device was difficult (unless you worked for one of the carriers, or maintained a register of peoples data). I recall all the one's I worked on had that eprom socketed, so it was easy to test the phone on a working account by simply popping in a 'test' eprom with a registered esn/phone number pair. I still have the charger with mine as well as a charger stand where you could pop the phone into the stand like a modern looking Qi charger, but I haven't pulled the phone apart since the 80's so I imagine the PCB has leaked batteries all over it by now. This was back in the day when you could still fix mobile phones at a component level - but that only lasted another 3 or 4 years, then we started doing board replacements in the early 90's and simply threw away the faulty PCBs.
It must have been amazing to work on these at that time. I did make a few errors in this video. For example I have since discovered the Eprom is removable. Sitting in very low profile socket pins. And the upgrade would not have been done while in the phone. I will correct that and other things when I can read this Eprom and make a part 2 video. My battery didn't leak too much and you could still try and clean yours up. Really awesome that you keep one on display.
I worked in the UK for both Vodafone and Cellnet at different times repairing analogue and gsm phones to component level well into the mid 90’s, I went on training courses and was an authorised tech for the likes of Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Sony and Ericsson to name but a few, thought it was a job for life given the cost of the handsets but then it got to the point where you could almost get a free one with a gallon of petrol! I work in industrial electronics now but still miss those days, the good old Marconi 2955 / 2960 test sets etc, thanks for making me feel so old 😂 Great Vid.
SIM cards for GSM must’ve been so much easier! Though in a way even 3G CDMA phones kind of still worked like that, with the subscriber info hard-programmed in
It was only difficult to get the ESN pair if you didn't own a snarfer. If you did have one, you just drove around the city centre for an hour or so and you'd hear the constant PING of pairs being logged. Not too hard to build one with an old scanner and some decoding logic. No security whatsoever, ah those were the days, lol
I like to imagine that to get someone's ESN/phone number, all you had to do is schmooze a middle aged office lady named Tilda who kept them all in a binder.
The footage used is australian, there is a few paid services that have the entirety of our major channels archived with footage stretching back to the 60s
@wazaagbreak-head6039 Amazing. Here in Greece the different stations archive their own programs for free, but some of it has been lost to time, for example our first ever entertainment program (mix of game with contestants and humorous skits, was named Louna Park) was all lost except a part of the last episode in a devastating fire that occurred on the (then) state owned station ΕΡΤ's (formerly ΕΙΡΤ) archives. Very sad to see a part of history be erased, even sadder as most of the Greek populace wasn't wealthy enough to own VCR's at that time.
Fascinating. My first experience of having a mobile phone was covering a renal unit in 1994. They had been around for a few years by then but they were still exciting to use in public.Within four years I had one of my own, and have kept the same number until the present day (2023). Weird to think they have been part of my life for almost half my entire existence. They are actually getting to be quite an old technology, and I may be part of the last generation to have proper, adult, memories of what the world was like without them.
Wow! What an awesome experience exploring this phone. This was a long one, I hope you enjoyed it all. I'm curious to know how familiar you are with the Technophone brand? Also, what did you think of that main board? That eprom is fascinating. I will be asking people I know that have eprom readers if they can help me read this thing. I'm just so curious to see the contents. Also inside those RF modules, one day I will go there. Possibly in a sequel I hope. Thank you for supporting the channel and being here in the comments. It really means a lot to me knowing that these videos are worth your time and how much you enjoy them. Thank you so much.
Those Kodak batteries are trash. It's really difficult to find cheap NiMH batteries in Australian shops now. IKEA is the best for Nimh and Bunnings have really cheap Varta alkalines. I've got an OKI 900 battery of yours with a printed cheat sheet on it. I'll give it to MM if you like ? Also let me know if you want any Palm accessories, I've got rather a lot. Including Mikes old Sony P800.
@@edwardfletcher7790 A P800 hey? If I can get bluetooth working then 'Browsing the Internet on a 20 year old Smartphone' could be a very interesting topic. I'll happily take any old tech you have, there are so many stories to tell.
these phones were modular so they could be sold all over the world.. right off the bat there were battles of frequency for cell networks.. making the radio transceivers modular allowed the phones to be adapted for any place they got regulatory approval (without a whole new phone). the EPROM also was there obvipusly so phone software could be updated easily.. I used to "mess" with the NAM modules in phones back in the day.. there was a lot of neat stuff you could do on the old analog networks.. im surprised that phone still had its NAM data unless they burned the defaults into the EPROM.. many of them were simply battery backed RAM so the NAM would lose its program when the 'CMOS" battery would die.. typically the little battery only got load on it when the main battery was dead thus they had a long life typically until a phone was tosed on a shelf someplace forever like yours was.. it is really interesting seeing so much SMT.. amazing for 1985.. I never remember seeing that much of it back then.. as a teenager (I was 19 at the time) I won a motorola "brick" and a year free unlimited service in a local radio station comtest... that thing was heavy but the looks it got walking in a shopping mall or sitting at a restaraunt talking on the phone was priceless!
I worked on cellphones I'm 1987 to 1990. I can't imagine how many uv eproms I erased and burned. This is how we set the phone number and carrier information like the ESN (yes the electronic serial number), kind of like a SIM card. That circuit board is amazing for 1985. Incidentally, 0.6 watts is still a lot of power for a portable, way more than a modern phone.
@James_Knott Thankfully. But sometimes I visit the countryside and my cellphone goes out of range. It sure would be nice to plug a cable into the phone and slap a high gain magnetic mount antenna on the roof. My customers used to use one of those on their bag phones. After they destroyed the cord, then they would let me install an antenna in the roof of their car and the cable would come up through the seat cushion and the seat back, right on the middle of the front bench seat, lol. I did a lot of limousines that way.
@@microdesigns2000 My wife bought her father one of those bag phones. It was sold as an emergency phone back in the days when people bought cell phones "for emergencies". 🙂
If not already, you should really read "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick. He hacked several companies to get the source codes of some of the earliest mobile phones. It really blew my mind how that stuff worked back in the day and I think it will fascinate you too. Thanks for putting up these videos!
The engineering on that board is beyond impressive, even to this day I would say other than surface mount package sizes changing it's still considered impressive with 12 layer boards, ASICs, etc. Very impressive. I've always had a thing for these old phones!
I admire how modular the internal design is of this phone, reminds me of the add-on board "hats" for the Raspberry Pi single-board computers. And the overall design for this phone is amazing for 1985, a very compact and advanced design for the era, thanks to it's SMT (surface mount technology) build. SMT circuit technology in the mid 1980s was just making its debut (I have a Kenwood TR-2600 handheld 2-meter transceiver from 1984 that's all surface-mount, probably one of the first SMT-designed devices manufactured). Thanks for producing this video, I actually wasn't aware of this phone, or even the Technophone company, until now.
This really was a tidy, mini 8bit computer. The problem with many IC's used for data storage is they sometimes use capacitor or static switching and can become corrupt just because they have not been powered up for a long time. To power this up after so long is rather amazing.
I love watching these videos about ‘old’ tech, especially when they talk about he innovations for the time. While not as old as this one, I’ve watched the 2007 iPhone Gen 1 release event about a dozen times. So many things features that we don’t even think about today we ‘invented’ for the first iPhone. It’s especially interesting watching old cell phone releases, since the ‘phone’ feature of most cell phones (if you’re anything like me, at least) is the least used of everything you get on a modern smart phone.
UA-cam clearly knows at this point that "Disembodied hands against a backdrop of brown furniture messing around with obscure technological devices" is apparently my favourite genre of media, and popped this into my recommendations. Damn you UA-cam, you know me too well. Subscribed!
Great video and really interesting for electronic enthusiasts. I would warn you though that the sticker on the EPROM window also stops it getting wiped from normal 'white' light which also contains UV. So it would be better to keep the window covered to stop wiping or corrupting the EPROM.
THE deserted island situation phone you could have! All you need to power it are some double a batteries :p amazing to see such a beautiful board! I love the look of those old boards!
Random little tangent, I work in a machine shop and an EEPROM fell out of one of our old machines we were throwing out, and it had one of those windows. It was perfectly clear unlike that one in this video, so I took it just cause it looked super cool. I was actually able to see the structure of the chip just under a normal microscope (I forget what magnification it goes to). But I never knew what the window is for, SUPER cool that you can erase the chip with a UV light! You learn something new every day!
Surface-mount tech goes back to the late '70's, but it did not get into mainstream consumer gear until the mid-80's. Nice soldering technique on those pins, BTW. (13:43)
When I was watching the video, I was having the sensation of watching a thriller movie. Excellent job not only for giving us the thrill but for bringing back a piece of history to life.
The character set is in the ROM built into the HD44780 LCD controller. If memory serves, it has ASCII, plus katakana for Japanese, and it's possible to download a few custom characters to it as well, but they don't persist. It's not an all-pixels addressible display--you send it characters. [Edited: I missed the "is" in the first sentence.]
Thanks for sharing a look at this artifact. I remember my father's Nokia bag phone. I loved the sounds it made when powering on, and connecting to the network. Kind of wish I could emulate that on my iphone. LOL
This video takes me a good few years down memory lane. My first phone was an old Motarola. It was far too big to fit in my pocket. It had a belt clip so that I could hook it onto my belt. It weighed as much as a half brick which was very comforting to me because if I threw it at somebody, it would mortally wound them.
What a feature 'Mortally wound them', kind of like the extra long flashlights full of 'D' cells, that security personally used to love carrying. A policeman's truncheon is illegal to carry, a flashlight is ok, same weight, same effect.
Thanks for memories, I remember using one of these phones back in 1988 when I started in the IT industry. We also had the Telecom brick phone with the red LED display :)
SMD components were around even in consumer electronics for at least 10 years at that point, but I would agree that a 12 layer PCB was mind blowing back then.
The percentages I've seen suggest maybe 10% of mid 80s consumer tech had SMD. I guess it depends on how much of the board had SMD vs through hole. There was a long transition period.
Thank you for doing this video, I was fascinated by this device as a child. By my teens, I came to know one of the sales guys and technicians from Mobile Tronics.
I remember those phones. I started work at Technophone in Camberley in 1989. I was sent to Brooklands college to study BTEC and EITB electronics, machine shop work, fabrication, welding in the first year full time. Then part time for 3 more years to do more electronics, and microprocessor study. I worked in the wiring shop in the factory and Ashwood House for about 2 years making test jigs and wiring looms, cables. Then I moved on to various production lines assembling and doing ATE testing of phones, boxing and packing. I assembled the PC205 which were more compact but still large by todays standards. The company was taken over by Nokia and the interior of the factory went through a huge makeover. A second floor was built and the production lines for phones were replaced with new equipment for manufacturing cellular base stations. I was assembling these huge cabinets for several months. Then went on to testing assembled boards and finally base station RF modules and transmitters. I left in 1994 to go to Hastings college and Brighton UNI and study HND electionics.
That must have been amazing to learn and work during that time in such a fast developing industry. I really appreciate hearing your story, thank you for sharing.
I was software lead for the PC205, I like to think it was that phone that really made Technophone as it sold in much greater numbers than the first generation PC105 etc.
I posted above that I think it was a 12 layer board *all laid out by hand*, no CAD software! I'm not certain, it was a long time ago but that was one of the reasons for the 12 layers and the hidden vias.
Great Edit, Great narration and of course good expertise. Well chosen music and awesome to watch ads from the 80s ! Thanks ! Definitely subscribed and waiting for more videos.
Very cool tech man, my father, who didnt stay around long, was a part of these beginnings, one of the few higlights of my youthnwas seeing things like this as a kid and to see one today brings back memories.
that's amazing. it's so cool seeing the early computers that were used in some of these devices that you wouldn't expect there to be a computer in... i have a couple of bang and olfusen turntables from the mid 1980s that i noticed having a software version printed on a label on back, and when i looked at the service manual found out there's a simple 4 bit microprocessor for controlling the logic of moving the tonearm, controlling the speed, and auto stop. microcontrollers were already becoming so ubiquitous even back then
My second mobile phone was a TECHNOPHONE PC205 with a car charger!!! Red light on the display, and 2 kind of batteries, one long duty and one slim but shorter life.
I think those loose pins (around 8:20) might have been press-fit and were never soldered in, although it's hard to tell from the video -- it does look like they have barbs on them. Press fit pins seem to be common in connectors that move around a lot to help mitigate the solder joints from breaking (like backplane connectors). Very cool teardown, though. Crazy to see a double-sided/multi-layer SMD board from the mid 80s, with that seemingly out of place DIP EPROM.
You are correct. I have since found the Eprom is sitting inside these press fit pins. I will include correction this in part 2 when I can get there. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed this.
FK amazing video. When those cellphone came in the market, I was a kid so I remember those years. My mother have the first Motorola Startalk and she turn off the services , But the cellphone keep working. So I got a cellphone with unlimited call in the 1990s
I remember purchasing a 27256 EPROM for a project I had planned as a teenager (when I was 17 or so in 1991), but never getting around to programming it haha. But the fact that this device still retained the chip in its finished, marketed form suggests that they were some combination of running very low on funds and rushing to market. Because they were barely beyond the breadboard prototyping phase if they were using an EPROM. But they clearly did spend money on beautifying the exterior of the device so the customers would be none the wiser.
We certainly were rushing to market, we were leading the world at the time but given the price of the phone a few pence saved by using a ROM was neither here nor there.
Very interesting video. On a side note, you can safely use 6 standard AA batteries, since 1.2V is the nominal voltage of NiCd batteries, but they reach 1.5 (even 1.6V) a brief period when fully charged, so the phone must be prepared to be powered with such voltages. I do not think this is the only reason for the lackluster backlight, but might be a part of it.
Thank you for helping make future videos on this channel even better! Here is the best copy I was able to find. somecontrast.com/blog/2007/11/nokia-history/
Wow, what an amazing video about an incredible piece of tech history! Seeing the numbered menu entries at 18:55 makes me wonder if items could be accessed by pressing that number and if that's perhaps where Nokia got the idea from?
I had a trunk mount Novatel cellular in 1985. It had a test mode which allowed tuning in on the various channels. Cell phone minutes cost $.38 each. No unlimited or metered monthly plans then.
Incredible look! Watching this video makes me realize that 1080p on UA-cam CAN look great. Just when it's 25fps 😅 Seriously though, I have never seen a board this clear before in 1080p. If you ever change to 60fps, please consider uploading in 1440p at least so a higher bitrate version of the video is available or so you are guaranteed to get a vp9 codec. I also love looking at these much simpler boards. The chips are so big! Even in a phone! Nowadays it's all mostly in one chip, but back then, it is still cool to see how it is separated.
Good lighting is key. Using lights with a high Colour Rendering Index (CRI), positioned to give shape and contrast on the subject really help the camera sensor capture a good image. 25fps also works well here because it's a small desk with no high speed movement. I will be looking into improving the quality when I am able to some new equipment. And thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed.
What a cool device! For its time, incredible. The early devices had an analog audio carrier. Everything later is digital. It's the switch to digital that allowed an economy of scale to take place, one transponder could handle dozens of individual callers. I was there when it happened, the analog systems were phased out.
I had a tecnophone water bottle! My Aunt worked for ComSat, the satellite phone company in the mid 1990's. She have me a swag bag from the company for my 9th birthday; it had all kinds of models and mock ups of cellular equipment, and satellites.
22:49 - "Nothing in the menu system allows you to access these lower-case characters, yet here they are in the ROM" I think the character set is built into the HD44780 display controller. It was a common display controller in those alphanumeric displays.
Fabulous exploration of this often forgotten groundbreaking phone. As I child I vaguely remember my uncle having one of these and that my dad still had a Motorola 8500X (I think?) handset. As the late 90s wore on I was given a well used Technophone PC 405 just before the first-generation networks went dark at the end of the 90’s. While I couldn’t make outgoing calls as it was given to me so my parents could contact me, it was fun to have something many other kids didn’t have at the time. Informative and awesome video as always! I love that nostalgic lo-if pre and end roll :D If you get to follow up on this with a base station, it would be fun to see if will work and also if there is anything interesting in that EPROM as well (which was not something I was not expecting to see in this phone either. Crazy stuff!). Great to see that this relic still works after a bit of love.
The CPU may be the QFP chip with the orange sticker on it, might be worth trying to lift it with some solvent and see if it's marked. From this era I'd kinda expect the custom ASICs to be handling the radio/audio mixed signal stuff rather than being SoCs.
The CPU is one of the variants of the 6802 family if I remember correctly and is indeed one of the QFP packages. The CPU came with either 256 or 512 bytes of internal RAM. The two ASICS were used for processing the incoming signaling and other call related stuff. We struggled to get the standby time up beyond 8 hours hence the offloading of the decoding of the Manchester encoded data stream to the ASIC. It also handled the detection and validation of the Supervisory Audio Tone (SAT) that was sent alongside the users audio signal (5970, 6000 or 6030 Hz).
At the time, dot matrix LCD had one manufacturer, which used it on their personal organiser. It was Toshiba. Also, the green LED are exhausted. Purity of the GaAlAs had still to be mastered. We had exclusively Monsanto GaAs red LED for almost ten years. Great find with that phone! A true professional - with deep links in the fab sector - designed that TACS phone. I believe it had to be one of the first 900 MHz analog modulation cell phones...
When designing the second generation PC205 we gave a PC105 to the HCI (Human Computer Interaction??) consultants and adding a power button was their first suggestion!
Stunning !!!!!!. Pleace, cover the EEPROM window. Even when not exposed to uv, you can still erase it if exposed to certain types or light for a long period of time.
Very nice vid. Unbelievable tech for it’s time / day. 12 layer board! Impressive Makes me wish for the ‘extended range’ (whip) antenna of the NEC days :)
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This video was BRILLIANT! The title card you made was spot on. So simple and yet it fit perfect! I love that one of the ladies said "the most intelligent mobile phone" she didn't call it a smartphone, but still :)
I don't know if you care about this aspect, but when you said "I'm even more excited" after discovering the eeprom, you did not sound convincing. Since I was also excited, I'm certain you were too, just didn't sound like it.
I have never heard of this phone or brand. Everybody skips from the Motorola brick phone to the startac usually. I was surprised just by seeing the title honestly. I didn't think there was a mobile made in the 80's that was pocketable. For reference, I am the same age as this phone. The effort you put into this video really shows. Just the research you must have done, wow! Then you presented it very well.
Did you figure out the mystery of the solder across those processor pins? I was afraid something bad would happen when you connected the battery. I'm very shocked the phone still works as well as it does. Thank for sharing this true marvel of 80's era electronic engineering!
When I made this video I recorded the entire disassembly and powering up process. I try very hard to capture my genuine experience during this time. Then I wrote the story script with all the things I've learned, either in full sentences or bullet points depending on the section and record the story of my experience. The final edit is a combination of the two recordings.
The moment of eprom reveal was in my head a lot and if I've been unable to capture and present that authentically then that's entirely on me.
The aim of this channel is to explore technology and connect with people as I do this. Which is why I'm humbled by the feedback I get from everyone and why I love your comment in particular. You are helping me to grow and improve.
Thank you for sticking with me as I learn to make better videos. I do find it really hard sometimes to properly express myself emotionally. But I also feel that I'm making progress with this over time. And from the wonderful responses I'm getting from everyone. Thank you all so much.
I learned during making this video that the eprom was how the software was upgradable in this phone. I'm now even more keen to read the contents. Though it will need to be desoldered from the board to do that. That could take some time to set up. The bridged solder pins are very weird indeed. I'm keen to look further into these things in a second part one day. In the meantime I've got a couple of new videos in the works and I hope something good comes out.
@@JanusCycle idk, I thought the eeprom reveal was done well aside from my previous feedback. I knew exactly what it was when I saw it, so my perspective may be different from someone that didn't. You did an excellent job of describing *why* it was exciting. It was just that one sentence that your words didn't seem to match the emotion. I also LOVED how well you described the nature of the board, double sided surface mount, 12 layers. I knew that was uncommon for the year, but you helped me understand just HOW special and uncommon it was for the time.
I have trouble expressing emotions too. Doing videos really helped me with that. The biggest thing I learned is that the camera works against you. For some reason, when I smile or sound angry, I never appeared to be expressing as much emotion as I thought I was. So I started exaggerating whatever emotion it was I was trying to express. Oddly that made me appear to be expressing myself more naturally in the video.
I think for the most part your speaking rhythm and cadence match the subject matter and 'feel' of your videos. Your voice is easy to understand and pleasant to my ears. For my american ears, your accent is almost melodic. I'm excited to see what you upload next!
It's the encouragement and honest criticism like yours that's really motivating me to strive towards making better videos.
@@JanusCycleyou should be able to read the programming with a clip lead set. Without desolding if you remove the battery. My guess that is how they would do programming too. If it was strictly programmed from the base, they would have done the erase from there as well. I was fixing cellphones in the early 2000 time frame, but I was playing with Amateur Radio before that, a 12 layer board is mind boggling complex for a decade before then. Techtronics would have been pushing their design software right up to the limit. 6 layer fab was much more common at least in the computer market though some places did more. It occurs to me that the RF modules separated by the battery may and likely at least 1 layer in the board was used for additional RFI reduction/isolation. I wouldn't know what to do with the information, but maybe you can find a technology service who can Xray it once you get the software backed up.
@@RowanHawkins I have since found out that the Eprom is sitting in very low profile socket pins and easy to remove. I think I was quite wrong about it being programmed in circuit. This will be in part 2. I now need to find a good Eprom reader/programmer. I am going to desolder those RF modules as well. Great suggestions in your comment as well, thank you.
I was the engineer that designed one of the application specific chips used in the PC105 series pocket phones, both AMPS ad TACS variants. I went on to be the worldwide software support engineer for the AMPS variant.
Hi Andy, thanks for stopping by. It's an honour to have you here. I hope you enjoyed the video.
I understand I made some mistakes in this video. I intend on correcting these in a part two. If you have any stories you would like to share, I would be very interested in hearing them. Either here or you can also email me if you wish.
@@JanusCycle One thing that might not be so obvious was that some of the variants of the main PCBs had buried vias on them. This was pretty revolutionary at the time, and hugely expensive as well.
@@JanusCycle Me again... The Service mode was designed by me as an aid in field testing. My original version was a lot more comprehensive than the version that we eventually released on to customers phones though. the service techs out in the field absolutely loved this feature as it allowed them to have far more visibility of the system than any of the competitors phones gave them.
@@AndyPevy This is all very interesting stuff. I really appreciate you sharing this.
Hi Andy, fellow Techophonist from a short while later👋 IIRC the processor was a standard chip, not in one of the gate arrays? Hitachi 6303? CMOS version of the Motorola 6800 family. Under the "GL" sticker perhaps.
I was 14 in '89 and went to a police auction and ended up buying one of these for £5... I couldn't get it activated but used to flex and walk around with it. This was when a mobile, especially in the hands of a child, would still turn heads. Little did I know, they were all thinking 'what an idiot' 😂
89 my dad had one of those grey bricks this would have been too expensive.
I remember about that time when people would walk through the mall pretending to talk on them. Adults.
I had one of them too. I feel old. Life is so fast.
Haha Well if you still got that phone you might could bring it to this man to repair it,only problem is he sounds like as if he got sex with his wife,damnit.
@@KenanTurkiyedon't remind me
This video brought back some memories. I was a very junior engineer at Technophone back then; I left in 1989. The back lighting wasn’t great but it worked better than on your example - maybe that’s something to do with age! The battery pack comes off much more easily if you unclip the front cover first.
Thanks for watching! It must have been amazing to work at Technophone during such an innovative time. I'm glad you enjoyed this.
Did you sign those QC stickers?
@@rhuttrho88 not personally, but someone did!
I worked there then! Do you remember that crazy Steve guy?? Those were fun times
With the hair? Claimed he stuck his fingers in the mains every morning to get it like that 🤪
excellent video, thanks a lot! In case you're not aware yet, the osmocom-analog project allows you to build open source SDR base stations for a variety of analog cellphone systems, including AMPS, TACS, MTS, IMTS, NMT, ...
This is something I would like to try one day. I have more learning I need to do with SDRs.
Does it do both 400 and 900 NMT?
Thanks! Like really Thank you, Besides Thank you for letting people just watch and enjoy.
I really appreciate this. You are helping the channel remain open, free and fun with your contribution. Thank you.
Even as “the first pocketable cell phone” it’s still somehow the most 1980’s thing imaginable. It’s like a walkie talkie crossbred with a phone born in a Radio Shack store.
great description :)
Looks like a calculator with an antenna lol
I mean that’s basically what it is….a calculator that connects peoples voices thru antenna lol
Tv remote
Thank you for a lovely engineering history perspective. The 12 layer PC board blew me away.
Just a tip, if you ever get a chance to acquire an Oki 900 handset, it truly was the hacker's/phone phreak's handset of the AMPS telephony era. The bottom connector of the phone exposed a LOT of the bus. I think it even carried some of the CPU lines. The internal service menus were superbly comprehensive. Some people reflashed them with custom firmware, but there was an almost turnkey plug-in integration with the HP 200LX MS-DOS palmtop and some scanning software that turned it into an impressively powerful and portable scanning platform.
I wold love an Oki 900, that is a legendary phone in hacking circles. I didn't know it worked so well with the HP 200LX, another legendary device. What an amazing combination that is.
UA-cam is not giving this man the number of views he deserves.
he is getting more and more subscribers x2 in 2weeks time
this guys narration was brilliant.
Very small niche though isn't it. Interesting for the geekiest of geeks but that's it.
I am 6 months late, but the Algorithm is working. ☝🏾🧠🥸
“Upgradeable software to ensure non-obsolescence…” 80’s advertising blurb for a now obsolete phone. There’s a lesson here for everyone perhaps.
The sheer engineering behind this thing is incredible. I can see why Nokia would be proud of this acquisition.
Yes, you can see a lot of tender loving care went into each connector.
The second that sticker came off with the window visible I gasped and started panicking the eeprom was getting erased. Glad to hear it needs a focused UV light.
It's very hard to erase an eprom without strong UV. Still it's good practice to keen them covered.
This was also my reaction as soon as Insaw the window! I'd only learned about those in class, never encountered one. I'm glad to know it takes a focused UV beam.
I think the "eprom's" memory is UV erasable. The "eeprom" or as you computer nerds like to call it, e-squared prom (😂😆🤣) is Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory.
Also, I didn't know surface mount was a thing in 1985.
Used to place eeprom under desk fluorescent lamp overnight to erase them during my EE degree days, about the same year when this phone came out.
I was Working a Trade show back in the 90’s, we had a Liebert Deluxe on the Floor, Powered up the Controls with 115 Volt Cheater Cord. These Japanese came up and started taking close up Flash Pictures of the Board(s). I got into a tussle with them. Yes, they wounded the EPROM. Luckily it wasn’t enough to destroy it working’s at the show.
It's simply amazing how everything was modular and so easy to take apart!
What an incredible thing this is, a real feat of miniaturisation for the mid 1980's that I'd never heard of before now.
Thanks for showing off these things and giving a demo of not just their insides, but also the work you put in to bringing them back to life as well.
11:50 this goofy 1 minute conversation probably cost $250 in 1985. lol - That board is a work of art. Wow. Thank you for sharing this!!
I used to fix these back in the late 1980's. I still have that exact model on display in my office (just for fun - to show visitors). I also have half dozen old eproms in a black UV proof case (try to keep yours out of any light sources or the data may get corrupted - hence the funny characters you are starting to see on yours). The eproms could be programmed with anyone's phone number and their ESN, then you could make phone calls on their account. A huge cyber security risk by today's standards, allowing technicians that kind of power. But getting hold of the ESN/phone number pair that the carrier had allocated to a specific device was difficult (unless you worked for one of the carriers, or maintained a register of peoples data). I recall all the one's I worked on had that eprom socketed, so it was easy to test the phone on a working account by simply popping in a 'test' eprom with a registered esn/phone number pair. I still have the charger with mine as well as a charger stand where you could pop the phone into the stand like a modern looking Qi charger, but I haven't pulled the phone apart since the 80's so I imagine the PCB has leaked batteries all over it by now. This was back in the day when you could still fix mobile phones at a component level - but that only lasted another 3 or 4 years, then we started doing board replacements in the early 90's and simply threw away the faulty PCBs.
It must have been amazing to work on these at that time. I did make a few errors in this video. For example I have since discovered the Eprom is removable. Sitting in very low profile socket pins. And the upgrade would not have been done while in the phone. I will correct that and other things when I can read this Eprom and make a part 2 video. My battery didn't leak too much and you could still try and clean yours up. Really awesome that you keep one on display.
I worked in the UK for both Vodafone and Cellnet at different times repairing analogue and gsm phones to component level well into the mid 90’s, I went on training courses and was an authorised tech for the likes of Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Sony and Ericsson to name but a few, thought it was a job for life given the cost of the handsets but then it got to the point where you could almost get a free one with a gallon of petrol!
I work in industrial electronics now but still miss those days, the good old Marconi 2955 / 2960 test sets etc, thanks for making me feel so old 😂 Great Vid.
SIM cards for GSM must’ve been so much easier! Though in a way even 3G CDMA phones kind of still worked like that, with the subscriber info hard-programmed in
It was only difficult to get the ESN pair if you didn't own a snarfer. If you did have one, you just drove around the city centre for an hour or so and you'd hear the constant PING of pairs being logged.
Not too hard to build one with an old scanner and some decoding logic. No security whatsoever, ah those were the days, lol
I like to imagine that to get someone's ESN/phone number, all you had to do is schmooze a middle aged office lady named Tilda who kept them all in a binder.
The found footage you show in each video continues to amaze me. How long do you spend searching for this stuff.
Totally agree, finding phone TV ads & news from the mid 80's !! WOW
The footage used is australian, there is a few paid services that have the entirety of our major channels archived with footage stretching back to the 60s
@@wazaagbreak-head6039 that's cool that you guys have that,one stop for archived old shows and stuff
@@YearsOVDecay1 the US is the exception, not the rule.
@wazaagbreak-head6039 Amazing. Here in Greece the different stations archive their own programs for free, but some of it has been lost to time, for example our first ever entertainment program (mix of game with contestants and humorous skits, was named Louna Park) was all lost except a part of the last episode in a devastating fire that occurred on the (then) state owned station ΕΡΤ's (formerly ΕΙΡΤ) archives. Very sad to see a part of history be erased, even sadder as most of the Greek populace wasn't wealthy enough to own VCR's at that time.
Fascinating. My first experience of having a mobile phone was covering a renal unit in 1994. They had been around for a few years by then but they were still exciting to use in public.Within four years I had one of my own, and have kept the same number until the present day (2023). Weird to think they have been part of my life for almost half my entire existence. They are actually getting to be quite an old technology, and I may be part of the last generation to have proper, adult, memories of what the world was like without them.
OG HD44780, what an amazing thing to see! everything is modular, and it's really small compared to the other phones of that era, just incredible!
Wow! What an awesome experience exploring this phone. This was a long one, I hope you enjoyed it all.
I'm curious to know how familiar you are with the Technophone brand? Also, what did you think of that main board?
That eprom is fascinating. I will be asking people I know that have eprom readers if they can help me read this thing. I'm just so curious to see the contents. Also inside those RF modules, one day I will go there. Possibly in a sequel I hope.
Thank you for supporting the channel and being here in the comments. It really means a lot to me knowing that these videos are worth your time and how much you enjoy them. Thank you so much.
Those Kodak batteries are trash.
It's really difficult to find cheap NiMH batteries in Australian shops now. IKEA is the best for Nimh and Bunnings have really cheap Varta alkalines.
I've got an OKI 900 battery of yours with a printed cheat sheet on it. I'll give it to MM if you like ?
Also let me know if you want any Palm accessories, I've got rather a lot. Including Mikes old Sony P800.
@@edwardfletcher7790 A P800 hey? If I can get bluetooth working then 'Browsing the Internet on a 20 year old Smartphone' could be a very interesting topic. I'll happily take any old tech you have, there are so many stories to tell.
these phones were modular so they could be sold all over the world.. right off the bat there were battles of frequency for cell networks.. making the radio transceivers modular allowed the phones to be adapted for any place they got regulatory approval (without a whole new phone). the EPROM also was there obvipusly so phone software could be updated easily.. I used to "mess" with the NAM modules in phones back in the day.. there was a lot of neat stuff you could do on the old analog networks.. im surprised that phone still had its NAM data unless they burned the defaults into the EPROM.. many of them were simply battery backed RAM so the NAM would lose its program when the 'CMOS" battery would die.. typically the little battery only got load on it when the main battery was dead thus they had a long life typically until a phone was tosed on a shelf someplace forever like yours was.. it is really interesting seeing so much SMT.. amazing for 1985.. I never remember seeing that much of it back then.. as a teenager (I was 19 at the time) I won a motorola "brick" and a year free unlimited service in a local radio station comtest... that thing was heavy but the looks it got walking in a shopping mall or sitting at a restaraunt talking on the phone was priceless!
Could you share the infographic with Nokia phones in decent resolution?
You might want to double check if that EPROM is really soldered in. The pins look too round and too thick from the bottom, could be socket contacts.
I worked on cellphones I'm 1987 to 1990. I can't imagine how many uv eproms I erased and burned. This is how we set the phone number and carrier information like the ESN (yes the electronic serial number), kind of like a SIM card.
That circuit board is amazing for 1985. Incidentally, 0.6 watts is still a lot of power for a portable, way more than a modern phone.
However, these days there are a lot more cell sites, closer to the users. This means a phone doesn't need as much power.
@James_Knott Thankfully. But sometimes I visit the countryside and my cellphone goes out of range. It sure would be nice to plug a cable into the phone and slap a high gain magnetic mount antenna on the roof. My customers used to use one of those on their bag phones. After they destroyed the cord, then they would let me install an antenna in the roof of their car and the cable would come up through the seat cushion and the seat back, right on the middle of the front bench seat, lol. I did a lot of limousines that way.
@@microdesigns2000 My wife bought her father one of those bag phones. It was sold as an emergency phone back in the days when people bought cell phones "for emergencies". 🙂
Ahhh, a blast from the past - better times in my opinion. Nice work!
If not already, you should really read "Ghost in the Wires" by Kevin Mitnick. He hacked several companies to get the source codes of some of the earliest mobile phones. It really blew my mind how that stuff worked back in the day and I think it will fascinate you too. Thanks for putting up these videos!
The UK’s technological prowess is sorely overlooked. Rule Britannia!
The engineering on that board is beyond impressive, even to this day I would say other than surface mount package sizes changing it's still considered impressive with 12 layer boards, ASICs, etc. Very impressive. I've always had a thing for these old phones!
This is amazing Sir. And your voice is so soothing too! I could listen all night. Thank you so much for this excellent work. 😊
Thank you for your compliments :)
Absolutely amazing video! Your channel really deserves more views, I'd even argue it's a crime that the algorithm hasn't rewarded you yet.
Thank you, that's an awesome compliment. I just hope that over time, the people that enjoy this kind of thing are able find the channel.
I admire how modular the internal design is of this phone, reminds me of the add-on board "hats" for the Raspberry Pi single-board computers.
And the overall design for this phone is amazing for 1985, a very compact and advanced design for the era, thanks to it's SMT (surface mount technology) build. SMT circuit technology in the mid 1980s was just making its debut (I have a Kenwood TR-2600 handheld 2-meter transceiver from 1984 that's all surface-mount, probably one of the first SMT-designed devices manufactured).
Thanks for producing this video, I actually wasn't aware of this phone, or even the Technophone company, until now.
Wow. This was amazing to see! What a great piece of history. Thank you for bringing this to us!
I'm glad you enjoyed this, thank you.
What an amazing piece of 80's tech. I didn't even know this existed. Great video!
thanks!
This really was a tidy, mini 8bit computer. The problem with many IC's used for data storage is they sometimes use capacitor or static switching and can become corrupt just because they have not been powered up for a long time. To power this up after so long is rather amazing.
Very interesting piece of history! Thank you for this amazing video.
I love watching these videos about ‘old’ tech, especially when they talk about he innovations for the time. While not as old as this one, I’ve watched the 2007 iPhone Gen 1 release event about a dozen times. So many things features that we don’t even think about today we ‘invented’ for the first iPhone. It’s especially interesting watching old cell phone releases, since the ‘phone’ feature of most cell phones (if you’re anything like me, at least) is the least used of everything you get on a modern smart phone.
I have no reason to need to know this much about an old phone - but your passion had me sitting through the entire thing!
I'm glad you got a kick out of this :)
UA-cam clearly knows at this point that "Disembodied hands against a backdrop of brown furniture messing around with obscure technological devices" is apparently my favourite genre of media, and popped this into my recommendations. Damn you UA-cam, you know me too well. Subscribed!
Those 37 years old handwritten stickers are so wholesome 😊
My mate worked in the factory in camberley and we had one of these. It had an old school eprom under the flap
Great video and really interesting for electronic enthusiasts. I would warn you though that the sticker on the EPROM window also stops it getting wiped from normal 'white' light which also contains UV. So it would be better to keep the window covered to stop wiping or corrupting the EPROM.
Thanks, I am keeping it covered. At least until I can back it up and hopefully make a part 2 video.
This is the first video of yours I have seen, and man, I really did enjoy it. Thanks!
That cut-away was all I needed... one minute in and I'm satisfied :D
Awesome!
Wow. This video is insane! Just what needed to watch to start my Monday.
THE deserted island situation phone you could have! All you need to power it are some double a batteries :p amazing to see such a beautiful board! I love the look of those old boards!
Random little tangent, I work in a machine shop and an EEPROM fell out of one of our old machines we were throwing out, and it had one of those windows. It was perfectly clear unlike that one in this video, so I took it just cause it looked super cool. I was actually able to see the structure of the chip just under a normal microscope (I forget what magnification it goes to). But I never knew what the window is for, SUPER cool that you can erase the chip with a UV light! You learn something new every day!
They do look cool. Sounds like fun finding one like that and keeping it :) Thanks for sharing.
Surface-mount tech goes back to the late '70's, but it did not get into mainstream consumer gear until the mid-80's. Nice soldering technique on those pins, BTW. (13:43)
1960s baby, nasa used it big time.
@@klaasj7808 Not surprised.
When I was watching the video, I was having the sensation of watching a thriller movie. Excellent job not only for giving us the thrill but for bringing back a piece of history to life.
That is an awesome description, thank you :)
The character set is in the ROM built into the HD44780 LCD controller. If memory serves, it has ASCII, plus katakana for Japanese, and it's possible to download a few custom characters to it as well, but they don't persist. It's not an all-pixels addressible display--you send it characters.
[Edited: I missed the "is" in the first sentence.]
Very interesting, I will include this in part 2 when I am able to make that.
Thanks for sharing a look at this artifact. I remember my father's Nokia bag phone. I loved the sounds it made when powering on, and connecting to the network. Kind of wish I could emulate that on my iphone. LOL
How fascinating. Way ahead of their time.
This video takes me a good few years down memory lane. My first phone was an old Motarola. It was far too big to fit in my pocket. It had a belt clip so that I could hook it onto my belt. It weighed as much as a half brick which was very comforting to me because if I threw it at somebody, it would mortally wound them.
What a feature 'Mortally wound them', kind of like the extra long flashlights full of 'D' cells, that security personally used to love carrying. A policeman's truncheon is illegal to carry, a flashlight is ok, same weight, same effect.
Thanks for memories, I remember using one of these phones back in 1988 when I started in the IT industry. We also had the Telecom brick phone with the red LED display :)
Those red LED displays with full dot matrix characters are amazing!
SMD components were around even in consumer electronics for at least 10 years at that point, but I would agree that a 12 layer PCB was mind blowing back then.
The percentages I've seen suggest maybe 10% of mid 80s consumer tech had SMD. I guess it depends on how much of the board had SMD vs through hole. There was a long transition period.
Thank you for doing this video, I was fascinated by this device as a child. By my teens, I came to know one of the sales guys and technicians from Mobile Tronics.
That is cool, thanks for letting me know.
I remember those phones. I started work at Technophone in Camberley in 1989. I was sent to Brooklands college to study BTEC and EITB electronics, machine shop work, fabrication, welding in the first year full time. Then part time for 3 more years to do more electronics, and microprocessor study. I worked in the wiring shop in the factory and Ashwood House for about 2 years making test jigs and wiring looms, cables. Then I moved on to various production lines assembling and doing ATE testing of phones, boxing and packing. I assembled the PC205 which were more compact but still large by todays standards. The company was taken over by Nokia and the interior of the factory went through a huge makeover. A second floor was built and the production lines for phones were replaced with new equipment for manufacturing cellular base stations. I was assembling these huge cabinets for several months. Then went on to testing assembled boards and finally base station RF modules and transmitters. I left in 1994 to go to Hastings college and Brighton UNI and study HND electionics.
That must have been amazing to learn and work during that time in such a fast developing industry. I really appreciate hearing your story, thank you for sharing.
I was software lead for the PC205, I like to think it was that phone that really made Technophone as it sold in much greater numbers than the first generation PC105 etc.
@@TonyWhitley what a great job!
the PCB design is insane!
I posted above that I think it was a 12 layer board *all laid out by hand*, no CAD software! I'm not certain, it was a long time ago but that was one of the reasons for the 12 layers and the hidden vias.
Thank you so much for this high quality content!
Wow that backlight is world class !!!!!!!!!!!!1
Great Edit, Great narration and of course good expertise. Well chosen music and awesome to watch ads from the 80s ! Thanks ! Definitely subscribed and waiting for more videos.
Me too! I am glad I found this AMAZING channel.
Very cool tech man, my father, who didnt stay around long, was a part of these beginnings, one of the few higlights of my youthnwas seeing things like this as a kid and to see one today brings back memories.
10 years ahead of its time! Like tech from the future!
that's amazing. it's so cool seeing the early computers that were used in some of these devices that you wouldn't expect there to be a computer in... i have a couple of bang and olfusen turntables from the mid 1980s that i noticed having a software version printed on a label on back, and when i looked at the service manual found out there's a simple 4 bit microprocessor for controlling the logic of moving the tonearm, controlling the speed, and auto stop. microcontrollers were already becoming so ubiquitous even back then
I'm a 10.5 year old. I love old technology because I think it's cool
I'm glad you enjoyed this. Learning how things worked in the past is a great way to gaining a more fundamental understanding of technology.
@@JanusCycle gonna work for Microsoft in the future
@@random_kid-gj2bw Microsoft are leading with AI technology these days. I hope you find amazing things to work on there.
@Janus Cycle same. Really hope I could get a job there in the future
My second mobile phone was a TECHNOPHONE PC205 with a car charger!!! Red light on the display, and 2 kind of batteries, one long duty and one slim but shorter life.
I think those loose pins (around 8:20) might have been press-fit and were never soldered in, although it's hard to tell from the video -- it does look like they have barbs on them. Press fit pins seem to be common in connectors that move around a lot to help mitigate the solder joints from breaking (like backplane connectors). Very cool teardown, though. Crazy to see a double-sided/multi-layer SMD board from the mid 80s, with that seemingly out of place DIP EPROM.
You are correct. I have since found the Eprom is sitting inside these press fit pins. I will include correction this in part 2 when I can get there. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed this.
Ty for sharing the story of this phone
FK amazing video. When those cellphone came in the market, I was a kid so I remember those years. My mother have the first Motorola Startalk and she turn off the services , But the cellphone keep working. So I got a cellphone with unlimited call in the 1990s
Cool, glad you dug this.
This video is a work of art.
I remember purchasing a 27256 EPROM for a project I had planned as a teenager (when I was 17 or so in 1991), but never getting around to programming it haha.
But the fact that this device still retained the chip in its finished, marketed form suggests that they were some combination of running very low on funds and rushing to market. Because they were barely beyond the breadboard prototyping phase if they were using an EPROM. But they clearly did spend money on beautifying the exterior of the device so the customers would be none the wiser.
You could be right. If the software was finished it would have been cheaper to have mask ROMs made in sufficient quantity.
@@JanusCycle Exactly.
We certainly were rushing to market, we were leading the world at the time but given the price of the phone a few pence saved by using a ROM was neither here nor there.
Oh what an awesome video. Fun to watch!!!
Pleased to hear that, thank you!
Very interesting video. On a side note, you can safely use 6 standard AA batteries, since 1.2V is the nominal voltage of NiCd batteries, but they reach 1.5 (even 1.6V) a brief period when fully charged, so the phone must be prepared to be powered with such voltages.
I do not think this is the only reason for the lackluster backlight, but might be a part of it.
and you can charge them too under supervision
Yes also that was prolly a good nuff decently priced LED for 85. LED tech has gonr far!
NiMh AA batteries have maximum 1.2V and are rechargeble. So maybe a better overall solution.
Sorry for my English.
Amazing video. Can you share link to full res "Know your past. Create the future." picture?
Thank you for helping make future videos on this channel even better!
Here is the best copy I was able to find. somecontrast.com/blog/2007/11/nokia-history/
I remember seeing someone using one of these at the cafe behind the Wintergarden in Brisbane 87/88. It mightily impressed me
Why is this stuff so addictive! Nice work 👍🏻
Wow, what an amazing video about an incredible piece of tech history!
Seeing the numbered menu entries at 18:55 makes me wonder if items could be accessed by pressing that number and if that's perhaps where Nokia got the idea from?
I don't miss interlaced video.
Well done! Very interesting and relaxing.
I had a trunk mount Novatel cellular in 1985. It had a test mode which allowed tuning in on the various channels. Cell phone minutes cost $.38 each. No unlimited or metered monthly plans then.
Had the same one
That was a seriously good transition in the beginning 😮😮😮❤
Incredible look! Watching this video makes me realize that 1080p on UA-cam CAN look great. Just when it's 25fps 😅
Seriously though, I have never seen a board this clear before in 1080p. If you ever change to 60fps, please consider uploading in 1440p at least so a higher bitrate version of the video is available or so you are guaranteed to get a vp9 codec.
I also love looking at these much simpler boards. The chips are so big! Even in a phone! Nowadays it's all mostly in one chip, but back then, it is still cool to see how it is separated.
Good lighting is key. Using lights with a high Colour Rendering Index (CRI), positioned to give shape and contrast on the subject really help the camera sensor capture a good image. 25fps also works well here because it's a small desk with no high speed movement.
I will be looking into improving the quality when I am able to some new equipment.
And thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed.
Excellent video. Great channel.
Please never stop making these videos
ok, deal :)
This was fascinating. Thank you!
glad to hear, thanks!
Don't remove the sticker on the eprom window, interior lights still can emit some UV and especially sunlight can corrupt the EProm
What a cool device! For its time, incredible. The early devices had an analog audio carrier. Everything later is digital. It's the switch to digital that allowed an economy of scale to take place, one transponder could handle dozens of individual callers. I was there when it happened, the analog systems were phased out.
I had a tecnophone water bottle! My Aunt worked for ComSat, the satellite phone company in the mid 1990's. She have me a swag bag from the company for my 9th birthday; it had all kinds of models and mock ups of cellular equipment, and satellites.
22:49 - "Nothing in the menu system allows you to access these lower-case characters, yet here they are in the ROM"
I think the character set is built into the HD44780 display controller. It was a common display controller in those alphanumeric displays.
Thanks, I will mention this in part 2 :)
Oh, royal playboy! I got the Technophone Type 107/3. It certainly is quite pocketable! Cheers from Sweden.
That has "my" chip in it.
OK, there were 3 of us and I can only claim the least of the credit.
Thank you so much for this video. This is wonderful.
Glad you enjoyed this.
Fabulous exploration of this often forgotten groundbreaking phone. As I child I vaguely remember my uncle having one of these and that my dad still had a Motorola 8500X (I think?) handset. As the late 90s wore on I was given a well used Technophone PC 405 just before the first-generation networks went dark at the end of the 90’s. While I couldn’t make outgoing calls as it was given to me so my parents could contact me, it was fun to have something many other kids didn’t have at the time.
Informative and awesome video as always! I love that nostalgic lo-if pre and end roll :D If you get to follow up on this with a base station, it would be fun to see if will work and also if there is anything interesting in that EPROM as well (which was not something I was not expecting to see in this phone either. Crazy stuff!). Great to see that this relic still works after a bit of love.
Great to hear your Technophone memories. I hope I can make a follow up one day.
Memory corruption on the settings menus is likely caused by removing the small varta battery.
This is so GREAT!
I was born in march 86 and as wonderful the phone is ( and your content )
Admittedly im gettin old 😢
This is an incredible video! Also an exciting phone!
The CPU may be the QFP chip with the orange sticker on it, might be worth trying to lift it with some solvent and see if it's marked. From this era I'd kinda expect the custom ASICs to be handling the radio/audio mixed signal stuff rather than being SoCs.
Thank you, I want to look into this in a part two.
The CPU is one of the variants of the 6802 family if I remember correctly and is indeed one of the QFP packages. The CPU came with either 256 or 512 bytes of internal RAM. The two ASICS were used for processing the incoming signaling and other call related stuff. We struggled to get the standby time up beyond 8 hours hence the offloading of the decoding of the Manchester encoded data stream to the ASIC. It also handled the detection and validation of the Supervisory Audio Tone (SAT) that was sent alongside the users audio signal (5970, 6000 or 6030 Hz).
At the time, dot matrix LCD had one manufacturer, which used it on their personal organiser. It was Toshiba.
Also, the green LED are exhausted. Purity of the GaAlAs had still to be mastered. We had exclusively Monsanto GaAs red LED for almost ten years.
Great find with that phone! A true professional - with deep links in the fab sector - designed that TACS phone. I believe it had to be one of the first 900 MHz analog modulation cell phones...
Amazing video and good job managing to turn the phone on.
I had a blast doing all this. Thank you.
When designing the second generation PC205 we gave a PC105 to the HCI (Human Computer Interaction??) consultants and adding a power button was their first suggestion!
So I love a bit of history, but re-constructive electronic archeology is really something else. (edit) This was bloody amazing to watch. Thank you.
Very informative!
Thank you
Amazing! Thank you
Stunning !!!!!!. Pleace, cover the EEPROM window. Even when not exposed to uv, you can still erase it if exposed to certain types or light for a long period of time.
It's covered, though there's not much UV-C around to be a problem.
Very nice vid. Unbelievable tech for it’s time / day. 12 layer board! Impressive
Makes me wish for the ‘extended range’ (whip) antenna of the NEC days :)