- Joined
- Apr 29, 2010
- Messages
- 8
One other thing I remembered:
If you're trying to activate a used T900, there is an internal NiCd memory battery that you may first have to recharge from a new alkaline battery. Your provider will give you the procedure, which is done from a factory menu on the unit. After doing that for a couple of hours, it can drain a fair amount from the alkaline battery in the unit. So be sure to check the battery meter after it's done and has been reset - you may have to put a new battery into it.
One other issue I've discovered is that SkyTel (assuming you can find someone there who will take your money), often does not put capcodes (the pager's address) on their pager labels. If you are out shopping for used pagers that you might want to activate, just beware of any that don't have a capcode printed on a label on the back. It's not the serial number, the model number, or the FCC ID number.
Now, there's no guarantee that the labels are accurate, but in general, people tend not to change them from the factory default capcode, from what I've seen. I bought a lot of stuff from a pager company that went out of business, so I know it's possible to read capcodes from a lot of 1-way pagers, but I don't have programming jigs and software for the 2-way ones, at least not the ones I'd want to use these days.
While these devices have been easy to use, when you look at some of the back end technology and protocol design, you can see that Motorola really pushed the limits of the state of the art. There are aspects to time slot management and even capcode encoding that are all designed to allow shoving as many messages down a bandwidth limited pipe as fast as possible. I used to implement network protocols for a living, and I can't help but admire some of what went into FLEX, even if it is arguably Byzantine.
If you're trying to activate a used T900, there is an internal NiCd memory battery that you may first have to recharge from a new alkaline battery. Your provider will give you the procedure, which is done from a factory menu on the unit. After doing that for a couple of hours, it can drain a fair amount from the alkaline battery in the unit. So be sure to check the battery meter after it's done and has been reset - you may have to put a new battery into it.
One other issue I've discovered is that SkyTel (assuming you can find someone there who will take your money), often does not put capcodes (the pager's address) on their pager labels. If you are out shopping for used pagers that you might want to activate, just beware of any that don't have a capcode printed on a label on the back. It's not the serial number, the model number, or the FCC ID number.
Now, there's no guarantee that the labels are accurate, but in general, people tend not to change them from the factory default capcode, from what I've seen. I bought a lot of stuff from a pager company that went out of business, so I know it's possible to read capcodes from a lot of 1-way pagers, but I don't have programming jigs and software for the 2-way ones, at least not the ones I'd want to use these days.
While these devices have been easy to use, when you look at some of the back end technology and protocol design, you can see that Motorola really pushed the limits of the state of the art. There are aspects to time slot management and even capcode encoding that are all designed to allow shoving as many messages down a bandwidth limited pipe as fast as possible. I used to implement network protocols for a living, and I can't help but admire some of what went into FLEX, even if it is arguably Byzantine.
