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Abandoned Motorola Headquarters
- Thread starter Unitrunker2
- Start date
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Here's a couple easy ones to get you started:
1) Micor mobile
2) CCTV Monitor
3) Pageboy-II
Motorola was very proud of that Pageboy-II.
They were years ahead of the competition.
Probably showing several models:
CAC two-tone tone only
Metro five tone tone only
DNC T&V
FNC T&V
theoleman
Member
Sad to read about loosing a facility with its history. It somewhat akin to the demolition of the General Dynamics Kearney Mesa facility and the loss of the buildings spiral staircase. With the passing of time and the fading of history, there is still many of the old AT&T microwave towers still around to remind me of the past and the technology that was was post WW2.
Change happens and the memories of a 40 plus working career slowly fade away.
Change happens and the memories of a 40 plus working career slowly fade away.
902
Member
We all have! And, we all worked for all or most of them, too!
902
Member
902
Member
902
Member
John -
Not an HT10, but an HT100. What I heard was Schaumburg wanted to have a pager-sized two-way radio and that's what happened. A neat collector's item whenever you could find one. Don at Fort Lee had one on 154.445 sitting in a cup years ago. He wasn't able to find a battery for it. That's actually an MX-300 in rubberized covering (and an impossible to find battery).
Kevin -
I had a bunch of these at the Port Authority of NY & NJ. They were replaced by Spectras, and 800 EDACS. I never actually saw one of these when I worked for Motorola.
Not an HT10, but an HT100. What I heard was Schaumburg wanted to have a pager-sized two-way radio and that's what happened. A neat collector's item whenever you could find one. Don at Fort Lee had one on 154.445 sitting in a cup years ago. He wasn't able to find a battery for it. That's actually an MX-300 in rubberized covering (and an impossible to find battery).
Kevin -
I had a bunch of these at the Port Authority of NY & NJ. They were replaced by Spectras, and 800 EDACS. I never actually saw one of these when I worked for Motorola.
I’ve still got a VHF MCX1000 kicking around. Used to run a VHF and UHF unit in my vehicle. 128 channels each, fast lock synthesizer and you could scan as many channels as you wanted.
MCX90 bottom right. Great radio for linking repeater sites.
MCX90 bottom right. Great radio for linking repeater sites.
902
Member
MCX90? Wow! I didn't even know that was a thing until now
We had them as MCX100 radios in the US. Not very popular. We had a federal client using them with DVP encryption. Outside of them, I never saw another one.That leads me to wondering about Motorola products being released worldwide, but regionalized for a specific market. I rarely got to see many of these things, and it was always a treat. Maybe the biggest Moto-thrill was playing with a set of 72 MHz MX portables with long helical antennas. They didn't sound any different than anything else, but just 72 MHz (and printed on the back tag, too). The programmable stuff always seemed to have something to make it not work with North American or specific US utilities.
The other Moto-fascination of mine was trying to figure out the targeted marketing of MX vs. MT500. For example, urban areas seemed to get MX radios while smaller areas got MT500. You couldn't even say the signaling package was different. MT500s had option boards to do MODAT ANI/ENI, and MDC600 (that would drive me nuts having to listen to that all day, and I did used to have to listen to MODAT in a couple of places... in NYCEMS, you literally could not get a word in edgewise while waiting for MODAT to clear the status/message system).
I always joked around that somewhere in Schaumburg there was a huge whiteboard that preordained who got what when they ordered it. The closest I ever got to the hallowed grounds was the NSTC/WWTE a couple of times for training on specific product repairs (Syntor X9000 and pre-GPS trunked networking for trucking... I forget what it was even called; some guy in a cowboy hat pulled an 18 wheeler into the shop once. Just once. It had like a KDT480 terminal). I never lucked out and "built a system" and got sent to Schaumburg to watch it get staged. Just the maintenance man.
"Don't go inside if it's a Medecco key
---------------------------
We had a few customers with cabinets that were keyed that way.
When the equipment required service, the customer would send a ummm..."representative" along with the tech.
Said "representative" would unlock the cabinet and then observe the entire service process.
---------------------------
We had a few customers with cabinets that were keyed that way.
When the equipment required service, the customer would send a ummm..."representative" along with the tech.
Said "representative" would unlock the cabinet and then observe the entire service process.
MCX90? Wow! I didn't even know that was a thing until now
The MCX series were manufactured in Canada and never really caught on in the US. Great radio and you could pick them up cheap at Dayton since most people just ignored them. Kind of a prerunner to the Spectra.
RocketNJ
Member
MH-10 there.
ElroyJetson
Getting tired of all the stupidity.
So many memories...
It's almost literally a true statement that I've owned at least one of every Motorola FM two way radio product shown in these photos, and more that I haven't seen in these photos.
Somewhere I have a photo of just my portable radio collection when it alone was over 80 radios. (Of multiple brands, but mostly Motorola.)
I had Motracs that were old enough that they hadn't transistorized the receivers yet. (Later Motracs only had a tube transmittter.)
I've had HT200s, HT210s, HT220s, HT10s, HT90s, HT440s, MT500s, pretty much everything newer....and really learned quite a bit from the MX series, which I say is the radio series that really made a technician out of me. I thought those were the neatest radios of all time (up to that point in time) and they taught me a VERY important lesson: Flexible circuits are supposed to be very reliable....but once they get flexed enough, they're the worst nightmare to troubleshoot and repair of anything on earth.
There was a German made Motorola mobile radio that was very interesting. It was a slim, compact dash mount radio, which internally was an MX portable with an added higher power output stage. They turned out not to be so reliable..
I saw and got to play with more interesting "SP model" MX radios than you can shake a stick at. Some really interesting ones, like a fourteen
channel UHF MX before the advent of the synthesized Scorpio (MX-300S) replacement for the legacy MX. Fourteen frequency channel elements, TWO offset elements, too. (One for simplex, one for 5 MHz repeater split offset)
I rebuilt and reconfigured more MX radios than I care to remember, including doing 48 channel conversions on Scorpios. I had a cheat sheet listing all the common parts combinations to order for any given reconfiguration.
The first 5 channel 800 MHz MX-300T trunked radio, with DTMF front, no less.
The incredibly rare MX310 size MX chassis is still on my bucket list. I had every other size, 320 to 360, but never have yet found a 310 for sale.
Out of all "vintage" radios I've ever used, if I have to pick the few that were the absolute standouts in terms of performance and reliability, for me it's the Saber for portable radios and the Syntor X (or X9000) high power drawer unit. (110 watts vhf) I never had a failure of one and they always out-talked every other radio.
I had a Syntor X installed in my car and with the 3dB gain Spectrum antenna I ran with it, I could talk simplex over 40 and 50 mile paths if the guy on the other end had equally good equipment. It'd bring up repeaters at full quieting at ranges in excess of 120 miles if the repeater was a good one on a high antenna site.
It's almost literally a true statement that I've owned at least one of every Motorola FM two way radio product shown in these photos, and more that I haven't seen in these photos.
Somewhere I have a photo of just my portable radio collection when it alone was over 80 radios. (Of multiple brands, but mostly Motorola.)
I had Motracs that were old enough that they hadn't transistorized the receivers yet. (Later Motracs only had a tube transmittter.)
I've had HT200s, HT210s, HT220s, HT10s, HT90s, HT440s, MT500s, pretty much everything newer....and really learned quite a bit from the MX series, which I say is the radio series that really made a technician out of me. I thought those were the neatest radios of all time (up to that point in time) and they taught me a VERY important lesson: Flexible circuits are supposed to be very reliable....but once they get flexed enough, they're the worst nightmare to troubleshoot and repair of anything on earth.
There was a German made Motorola mobile radio that was very interesting. It was a slim, compact dash mount radio, which internally was an MX portable with an added higher power output stage. They turned out not to be so reliable..
I saw and got to play with more interesting "SP model" MX radios than you can shake a stick at. Some really interesting ones, like a fourteen
channel UHF MX before the advent of the synthesized Scorpio (MX-300S) replacement for the legacy MX. Fourteen frequency channel elements, TWO offset elements, too. (One for simplex, one for 5 MHz repeater split offset)
I rebuilt and reconfigured more MX radios than I care to remember, including doing 48 channel conversions on Scorpios. I had a cheat sheet listing all the common parts combinations to order for any given reconfiguration.
The first 5 channel 800 MHz MX-300T trunked radio, with DTMF front, no less.
The incredibly rare MX310 size MX chassis is still on my bucket list. I had every other size, 320 to 360, but never have yet found a 310 for sale.
Out of all "vintage" radios I've ever used, if I have to pick the few that were the absolute standouts in terms of performance and reliability, for me it's the Saber for portable radios and the Syntor X (or X9000) high power drawer unit. (110 watts vhf) I never had a failure of one and they always out-talked every other radio.
I had a Syntor X installed in my car and with the 3dB gain Spectrum antenna I ran with it, I could talk simplex over 40 and 50 mile paths if the guy on the other end had equally good equipment. It'd bring up repeaters at full quieting at ranges in excess of 120 miles if the repeater was a good one on a high antenna site.
Back in the 80's Motorola was a giant. They had a finger in a lot of pies, not just the radio world. I remember working with them on an adapter for voice over T1, various four wire modems, all kind of stuff. They presented a corporate face not unlike IBM's.
And of course, like IBM, Wang, DEC - a job with them was a job for life. Back then, that was.
Man, all this nostalgia has me tempted to get on eBay and buy an old Fireberd T1 test set...
And of course, like IBM, Wang, DEC - a job with them was a job for life. Back then, that was.
Man, all this nostalgia has me tempted to get on eBay and buy an old Fireberd T1 test set...
K9RPL
Member
Motorola was very much like IBM. While I was there it was white shirts and ties. We all looked forward to Bill Weiss's memo in the early summer letting us know we could could ditch the ties unless we were with customers. At the end of the summer the follow up memo came telling us to put the ties back on. We dreaded it but he's the boss.
You couldn't tell the difference between a Motorolan and an IBM'er.
ElroyJetson
Getting tired of all the stupidity.
Every time a major corporation starts spinning off/divesting business units, in the long term it's been bad news and I still know of no exception to that rule. Motorola should NEVER have divested Motorola Semiconductor or sold off any business units. You don't downsize your way to greatness.
Motorola passed up their chance to acquire a controlling interest in GE's radio business, multiple times. I'll never understand why they didn't snap up the little remnants of what was at the time just comm-net, all that was left of GE and reportedly just days from going down the drain, which would have cost them their christmas party fund money.
Motorola passed up their chance to acquire a controlling interest in GE's radio business, multiple times. I'll never understand why they didn't snap up the little remnants of what was at the time just comm-net, all that was left of GE and reportedly just days from going down the drain, which would have cost them their christmas party fund money.
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