That is awesome you were able to get this to work with DOSbox and USB to serial. I hadn't considered this possibility. Thank you for sharing your experience and tips on this. And well done on getting your phones to work again. Your comment made my day, thank you.

​@@JanusCycle - Geez... the size of that full sized sim card. lol I only heard about it, in the US I've never seen one, always been using the mini size from the beginning. I still have one of those "white" test cards with IMSI 000-010xxx, great for testing purposes.

so cool!

Welcome good sir, thank you for your work. You helped many people everywhere learn about how SIM cards operate. I hope you got a kick out of seeing your software appear on KZfaq in 2023. I would love to hear your thoughts about that time in history, or any other perspectives you wish to share.

Nice to see you around here! When I saw the contraption my first idea was also to just buy a PCB on JLC or PCBWay or something. Maybe all those years in you could open source the emulator for everyone's benefit? :-)

@@app0the The project was open source and the code was hosted on the Janus Motorola Pages

It’s truly amazing what the KZfaq comment section has to offer sometimes! Great to hear from the guy who wrote the software for fun and to help others out for free, I really miss those times of the internet.. Btw. Are you german @Lord Olaf? The DOS prompt gave a German reply.

Wow legend!

Sounds like you had a timeport with a green OLED display, they look cool. Great story, thanks for sharing.

I remember my friend and I had phones when we were like 15 probably in 2000 and someone on the bus said "those kids must be drug dealers with those cell phones!" LMAO now every kid has a phone

When you put a minute of ads before having 100k plus subs that tends to happen.

@@alfredoibarra9825 KZfaq puts ads on videos. He might or might not be monetized even KZfaq will still put ads. Its not 2015 when people could chose if their videos have or don't have ads.

@@evgenidimitrov2639 Blame Google for that

I didn't know about modding Motorola KRZR phones, thanks.

Simpler times but still much fun, thanks for your comment.

Thank you :)

I'm pleased you are enjoying :)

They did make backpacks for the startac

The Star-Tac was a beast, it was the most durable phone for its size and yes the battery could go for days without a recharge.

2G is still in use in Central Europe with the plan of shutting down no earlier than 2028. We shut down 3G networks rather than 2G in the effort of making space for 5G as there's a significant number of users with 2G phones (I assume old people) while 3G never really took off around here.

In the days a little before, phones used analogue transmission with digital codes for cell routing etc. Some shitty newspaper had a radio scanner and caught Prince Charles exchanging naughty words with Camilla. All completely unencrypted. The other thing was, people would set up premium-rate phone lines. Then they'd go out and wander through town with a receiver picking up, I think, ESN and MIN codes ("pairs"). They were transmitted by phones as part of the protocol, unencrypted, and the network trusted you were who you said you were. So they'd hack phones and put in these pairs, cloning the phones whose signals they received earlier. A cloned phone is on somebody else's phone bill. I saw a TV report, a wall with dozens of phones mounted to it, all on chargers, and all cloned. Ringing up the premium rate number in another county. Racking up a fortune in bills. But because it was a foreign country, the home nation (Britain) couldn't do anything to force a refund. The foreign telco and the pirate split the profits. A lovely little earner, and all you had to do was hang round a metropolitan train station for a bit while your gadget filled up with pairs. When it was full, you go home with your haul. They made a ton. Of course this was when only rich wankers owned mobile phones, back in dinosaur times, so little sympathy. Usually their carrier refunded them and copped the bill themselves. International phone agreements mean bills must be paid!

The StarTAC X looks even better than this model. I would love to try one out one day.

KZfaq says they optimize what you see to give the viewer the best experience. That's a good sentiment if true. So if both videos are worth watching, then that's the most important thing to me.

@@JanusCycle can you create some type of device that can output a 1x,2g, or 3G signal but connects to 4G or 5G? It would be cool to make a call on a retro phone

​@@Vap3king it's essentially a translator like a radio or TV station translator station

Thank you for your support. In return I’ll keep making the best videos I can make.

@@JanusCycle I have a siemens cell phone from this same year and it has a bigger card then this to. It has omni point as the provider. The sim card goes on the back. .

I think it might be possible by hooking the SIM emulator to something like Raspberry Pi Zero W and running ASIM on DOSBox. The real challenge though is to write a program that handles Bluetooth connections and translates them for ASIM.

There's a program called SamTool that enables RF Test mode (*#73#) on Samsung phones via AT commands over the "diag" usb mux. It's an enormously usefull dialer code once enabled. The system uid shell exploit is awesome too because it gives read access to all the phone's battery stats listed under /sys/class/power_supply/battery like # of cycles and even # of times the usb-c plug has been used lol

​@@snowdaysrule2 couldn't get it to work on my note 20 Ultra

@@snowdaysrule2 tried that and nothing happened on my M23

@coreybabcock2023 Give it another shot! I just used it on a sm-n9860 and a sm-s901u1 and it really does enable *#73# | The program was apparently given an update because both phones were able to enable RF Test pretty much instantly the process works the first attempt now.

That is cool, clipping directly onto the sim pins and getting the job done. The V3688 is so light and small, I have one as well.

@@JanusCycle The V3688 is a cool device. The sounds quality is good and the holographic reflector they used in the screen is really neat. Unfortunately its all plastic clipped together construction makes it a bit flimsy - a bit reminiscent of today's smartphones! These old GSM Motorolas would be quite usable today if it weren't for issues with their SMS support. They only seem to support the 7 bit GSM character set and some people will send messages with non-GSM characters, in which case the phone will refuse to display the whole message, whereas Nokias and Erricsons will just ignore the dodgy characters. I've no idea what characters people sent me in order to cause this; probably just those pesky smileys :).

Yes it's me, hehe. But as you know now i'm more focussed on Sega Arcade Cabinets and Pinballs.

lovely avatar

Nice, vintage laptops are great for this kind of thing.

​@@JanusCycle definitely agree

it's GMS, SMS, full phone, the sim card doing a lot on the heavy lifting, thing SIM card on the phone like phone book telephone number, and all SMS (email) massaging was all handled by the sim card, just taking your sim card of of your phone, them placing it different phone moved your phone book, and all your massages too, to that phone not just your phone number, the sim card is a little computer (CPU,MEMORY,STORAGE,PROGRAMS all the bit that make computer) in it own right it not just simple memory card, the phone is of not (sort of terminal, and power supply, and radio transmitter/receiver ), to access the real phone that is really the sim card?

It was the same here in Australia until the networks were shutdown in 2019 (At least for telstra). Afterwards, they immediately shrunk the size of the plastic knock-out as no phones which utilize full size sims would still have a network available to them

@@dh2032 SIM card is just a storage + crypto processor to auth into the network and decrypt stored data.

Not really, operating voltage is different, it would either simply not work or fry the modern card.

You could still use a StarTAK in Germany as GSM (2G) has not been shutdown here yet

I'm really glad you are enjoying these videos. I am working on some new ones at the moment. New one coming soon.

Really great to hear from a StarTAC fan. Thank you for letting me know the model I have. I envy that you are still able to use yours. StarTACs feel so retro-futuristic, one of the best 1990's phones.

@@JanusCycle Take your StarTAC on your travels. Many counties still have 2G. I’ve used mine all over Europe.

I wish I could use older phones here, but everyone's pushed into 5G. :(

Older is not better. I miss nothing about old phones. I lived thru it. This iPhone I’m using is WORLDS better. It’s all just for fun I guess. I wouldn’t have fun beyond a little video watching really.

Glad you are enjoying the videos, thanks for watching!

cool, thank you.

The analog ones didn't have the sim card

These videos will always remain free. Because I love making them and sharing them with all of you. I do need an income. But that will come from other things, hopefully I can get that side happening. Thank you for your comments and for watching!

Awesome :)

That site wasn't me. Just the same first name. Great to hear from someone who did this back in the day.

@@JanusCycle Awesome video anyway, keep it up. Thanks for bringing it all back.

Awesome, I like hearing that :)

Some great hacks of the 1990s are starting to become forgotten. I’m putting a stop to that :)

You meant NMT or 2G 2G is still uvailable (we in Slovenia have it as well as Croatia, Italy, Austria, etc)

Nice, I like a good coincidence like that. I hope you are enjoying learning the performing arts :)

If I get one I will.

I may not be that old, but I remember this issue and my dads solution, a bandaid under the chip.

I have been working to reduce hum. This one did get though, sorry about that. Hopefully my other recent videos have been better. I'm glad you are enjoying. Thank you.

I'm pleased to hear that :)

I used to do that back in the mid 2000s bricked a few v3m,s