SIM Card Emulator Vs Motorola StarTAC
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Using a Motorola Test SIM card on a Motorola StarTAC to access service mode. But what if the Test SIM is damaged and doesn't work? Then build a SIM card emulator instead. This also enables emulating a Motorola Clone SIM for even more service mode goodness.
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Thank you for your video, it helped a lot while I was replicating this for my own Motorolas and I find your videos a joy to watch. I didn't have a vintage PC to use, but making use of a DB9 serial to USB adapter worked fine when passed through to DOSBOX on a modern system. I didn't have to patch anything and have been using the ASIM emulator clone card to unlock my phones (An MR1 and MR601 locked to Orange UK) and use them again once more. I'm from the UK, so we still have GSM900 and 1800 networks in operation and the phones remain fully functional. If anyone wants to replicate this, I'd recommend the following tips: Use a modern SIM as your base, as these cards are much thinner and flexible making it easier to slide into the phone with the added thickness of the adapter. 5k1 resistors work fine in place of the 4k7 resistors with both of my Motorola units, but your mileage may vary and oddities / damage may occur. Finally, if you get stuck where only test mode works through the ASIM emulator, it's likely you just need to load the clone card and then use the clone menu option in ASIM to initiate clone mode rather than just loading the SIM like you would with the test card.
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!
I was The Android, back in the day i made The Asim Emulator back in 1998, is amazing than 25 years after you got it working on a old StarTac Phone. The trickiest thing was to conect to the SIM socket. Back in the day i was working on a company manufacturing SmardCard Readers and i made my own PCB of the size of a SmartCard with only the exposed pads to the ISO7816 contacts routed to the border of the PCB where i was soldering a flat cable with an IDC8pins connector on the other side.
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 RUclips 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 RUclips 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!
I had a startac timeport when I was 16 in '99. I loved that phone. The neon green screen was awesome. Best phone at that time. My mom was so pissed, "the only people that have cell phones are doctors and drug dealers" she yelled at me. Lol. Life was so good back then.
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
This is such a fun trip down memory lane. I didn’t have a chance to mess around with the StarTac phones, but I spent a LOT of time editing memory dumps of my Motorola e815 and my Motorola KRZR back around 2005-2007. I remember being SO annoyed with Verizon here in the states and how they disabled features or (like in the case of the KRZR) how they put their own custom UI on it instead of the native Motorola UI. With the help of Internet forums and questionable software, I was able to enable hidden features, turn on disabled features, and load up different firmwares from Canadian carriers to get my Moto UI back like I wanted it. There was nothing quite like the rush of editing memory dumps bit by bit then holding your breath as you hit the write button hoping that it booted and didn’t break the device (while hoping the feature you wanted was enabled!) I recently got into playing with SDRs and getting a couple of AMPS phones back up and running on my own mini network, but I may have to add a couple of these StarTac handhelds to my 2G test networks! Thanks for the video - this was a cool find!
I didn't know about modding Motorola KRZR phones, thanks.
Those phones were sold together with fixed car phones in a bundle. The ones in the car had a higher output, and a roof antenna so they would work in places with less coverage. The car phones used the big SIM card format, so to make it easier to transfer, they used the big cards also in the startac. (source: me, selling and servicing car phones around 2000 for PTT/KPN telecom)
3:03: I love how, in the documentation, it refers to data transfer as "personality transfer".
lol, also hi skcro.!
The Star-Tac was my absolute favorite of all time. Small, clean audio, reliable, and crazy battery life. I've never owned a phone that I liked better.
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.
I have been glued to your channel for the last few hours, every video is just nostalgic. Thanks for bringing back the memories of how i and my friend were used to tweaking these phones back then.
I'm pleased you are enjoying :)
you are criminally undersubbed
When you put a minute of ads before having 100k plus subs that tends to happen.
@@alfredoibarra9825 RUclips puts ads on videos. He might or might not be monetized even RUclips 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 was genuinely on the edge of my seat when you popped that adapter in and it started working. Cheers!
I love that this is relatable to modern day phones. Samsung also just removed some hidden menus like the band selector from their phones requiring a shell exploit to access now.
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
@@snowdaysrule couldn't get it to work on my note 20 Ultra
@@snowdaysrule 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.
I miss that phone, made me feel badass when I used it. I can't tell how many times I would just pretend to use it for a call to show off, pulling up that antenna just gave u a feeling of coolness
This brings back so much memory.. I used to own the StarTAC 70/80/90 and StarTAC X phones back in the day.. the latter which uses a smaller sized SIM instead.. and also a few variants of the MicroTAC models. Love them.. big bricks 😅
The StarTAC X looks even better than this model. I would love to try one out one day.
When I was little, I had one of these, at the time my brother's girlfriend worked in a telecommunications conglomerate, as a telemarketing attendant. She had access and enabled a line for this phone for a few years, but my version did not come with this SIM port, it was already integrated into the device. Nice video =)
Releasing 2 videos simultaneously is a bit of a bold move (I've heard that multiple releases within a day can affect whether subs see the video). But considering you've got call to actions in both it makes sense.
RUclips 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
What a thoroughly interesting watch. Regarding your issues with the timing of ASIM, I was interested to see how it was solved. I had a similar issue with erroneous operation of Motorola software used to program Syntrx radios. My solution was to run the software on a 486DX, that I had stashed away. Seemed to work nicely.
One of the greatest videos on youtube. Really appreciate the time and effort you spend making these videos. Totally recommending your channel on people around me. Please keep uploading such great content!
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. .
The combination of "The Android" and "Turbo Pascal" gives me an eerie feeling that I might actually know the person in charge for that nice emulator tool, even though we met in a completely different industry of things :P
Yes it's me, hehe. But as you know now i'm more focussed on Sega Arcade Cabinets and Pinballs.
lovely avatar
I enjoy watching every video of yours, whether it's a movie or a documentary. You are great.
Thank you, I'm pleased you are enjoying so many of my videos.
Ah man, changing the welcome screen graphic reminds me of those pestilent Nokia 3310s everyone used to have. Every magazine you read would have pages full of ads, new screens you could receive by text message, if you spent 3 quid txting this company a special code. All sorts of really cheezy little hand-drawings and the odd dithered photo that was supposed to look like some celebrity. "I love boobs" "cars are great", all the quality stuff you could ask for. And the ringtones! Remember when that was a market that existed! Then disappeared just as quick when MP3 ringtones came in. Business must have been as good as vapes were a year or two ago, every other shop in my town sells vapes!
Anyway... if it were me I'd twist those wires together on the shonky SIM adaptor, just for a modicum of strength. I might also stick the connector on the other side of the card, so you could still use it's original function if you wanted to.
Giant SIMS, too! I remember those on the ubiquitous Philips Diga everyone got for xmas one time in the 1990s.
i like seeing old technology of course and learning about it
i find it equally cool, and nuts, that anyone does this kind of stuff with ancient tech
StarTAC geeze i miss those, they were awesome!
Love the old laptop to, i still have a few 486 and pent 1 laptops to program my old motorola twoway radio stuff :)
Nice, vintage laptops are great for this kind of thing.
@@JanusCycle definitely agree
Great video. I collect and restore StarTACs and other Motorola phones and I'm lucky to have the equipment to unlock them to use other networks and change the boot logo. Not many people have it. I have a StarTAC car kit and so I have an 85 with a Lexus LS430 logo. FYI that's an 85 you have, not an 80. Luckily 2G is still present here and I use a StarTAC as a secondary phone.
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.
I don't know how I found your channel but so glad I did.
Glad you are enjoying the videos, thanks for watching!
My Dad loved his Startac phones. When he'd get a new one, it was my job to manually input contact details from one to the other, in the car, getting motion sickness. Bloody Narc. Anyhow, this ability to clone from phone to phone would have been really useful.
No idea why this appeared in my feed, glad it did though! Subbed
Awesome :)
Oh my god! That's actually what I did in 1999 or 2000 when I was in university. I had all this soft and this site was dumped on CD, it had some crazy collection of hacker's and phreakers sites and utils. I did exactly the same with logo and service menu. Additionally, I've cloned my sim and managed to run a copy of it on PIC16F84 microcontroller emulator. Oh boy, what a flashback video. Wait a minute, WAS THAT YOUR SITE???
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.
Reminds me of the iPhone field test mode. Neat stuff.
bloody impressive mate. love the channel
cool, thank you.
This is wonderful, my dad found 9 of his old startacs from his old work in the 90s. I've been looking into a way to make the network function work on current G cellular networks as I understand this generation of network has been shut down in all coutrys except russia.
You meant NMT or 2G
2G is still uvailable (we in Slovenia have it as well as Croatia, Italy, Austria, etc)
This was one of my first phones as a teen in 1999. Managed to get sms to email working and felt like I was mastering the matrix
Awesome phone to have as one of your first!
An idea: you might be able to cut between the contacts and/or microwave a full sized card for a few seconds (to fry the intenals), check with a continuity meter that tnere is no continuity between pads a d simply solder directly to the pads on the dummy card. Also you might use a loyalty/gift card from a shop.
This channel is strangely interesting, and i like it.
Awesome, I like hearing that :)
I just knew there was a Portege coming when I saw that docking module!
Just casually going down an old phone modding rabbit hole at 2:30 AM lol
The StarTac brings back some memories
Brilliant Content as always. Criminally underrated !! I just hope when you become immensely successful (as you should be) you wont just eff off to Nebula or that curiosity pisswork and leave us loyal viewers holding our male parts
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!
That startac was one of my second cell phone. I always thought it's giant sim card was really wierd.
The Motorola flare predates this but also used the full size card.
My first mobile phone was purchased in 1997, a siemens c10 swing with Optus express prepaid. Cost me $200- Still have that phone number.
Kinda shame that GSM is gone. I could answer the phone before or rang
The 9-pin connector is named DE9, not DB9 :)
Does test cards works on newer phones?
My first phone. It's most impressive feature was the
dot matrix screen that allowed for scrollable text.
You should do a video about Motorola Razr and QPST. Flashing 'monster' files and enabling features like Bluetooth file transfer on carrier locked phones.
I used to do that back in the mid 2000s bricked a few v3m,s
I really wish there was a way for these phones to work on more modern networks. Every iteration of mobile phone network completely breaks compatibility with the last and it is a shame
LTE is designed for long term compatability. That doesn't help legacy products though.
@@JanusCycle I’m curious as to what that would look like in action though. Would it mean that LTE devices could connect to newer generations of the network when LTE itself is killed off?
@@burntoutelectronics I'm not familiar enough with the details. I just remember that LTE (Long-term evolution) was meant to help with obsolescence. Things could have changed with 5G though and I could be out of date.
Very, very cool. I love your videos
I'm pleased to hear that :)
I really liked this video, thanks for sharing 😎👍.
Awesome, I'm glad you enjoyed this. I had a really good time making this video.
I didn't know that the SIM card slot could be used to modify a Motorola StarTAC.
A classic, popular phone!
I only started selling sell phones in the 2012s, so I know about *3001**#12345**#* and the rest of the command menus but stuff like this is neat to watch and learn from
I knew about this stuff since I was 19 I'm now 39
"How would you like to pay sir ?"
Me: With my Sim card it's an actual card
Oh, memories ... still have same stuff still in boxes on attic, including some Motorola d160's with easily accessible BDM interface connector.
When I was a student. I couldn't afford to have one, even a mobile phone. Few of my friends had this model.
Oh. That's the way I thought they did all of the firmware stuff on every phone without a USB or other data port when I was younger. Most likely when I saw the phone provider's options for additional "programs" for phones that would appear in your menu after paying a fee and restarting the phone. Mostly weather reports, simple games and ringtone sequences.
After taking some phones apart, I also noticed uncovered golden data communication pads on the PCBs.
Who does this? , I love this channel
this was my first phone. then came nokia 3310 and i sold it for about 2 dollars cuz the battery was wasted. it brings back memories
When i had motorola 8700 back than I built a similar serial interface.. It was a PCB longer than a regular Sim Card with a max232 circuit. I remember using medit to modify the logo image!
I had a slightly different StarTac, one with a color screen. Really cool phone at the time.
I had a StarTAC in 2014/2015, bought a prepaid SIM and used it for quite a while for fun. Did the same with a few more of my older models. Shame that 2G is gone now.
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.
@@YS_Production Nobody cares about old people in this contest... Here (Europe, at least Italy) it's still there because of POS and things like that. Too much effort to replace millions of devices just to be compatible with newer technologies. (Yeah, Ingenico and other manufacturers for example, also in 2023, still uses GPRS).
@@DetectiveOnanand power meters of Enel, the electric company.
@@mm-es6yq Right. Even some "newer" gas ones. But at least my gas meter, under TIM network, it's on 3G if I recall correctly.
Do You remember the codes used to hear other users conversations? As a kid i didnt understand what it was
Legend has it this man showed john Connor how to get easy money from ATM machines 🤣
You can easily remove the plastic under the wires
i used to have that phone.. but not with the card. one of the test mode allows you to listen to near vi conversations. fun times.
Very Very Useful
Flashing phones for resale from the grey market be like
would love to see the same video but with a satellite phone
Why was accessing those modes via the keypad disabled?
Because people were enabling functions meant only for more expensive models. Motorola had a profit incentive to follow.
I would 3D print a sim card to accommodate the wires 😉
Amazing !
Wait, SIM spoofing is not hardcore hacking equipment, but COM port with three transistors? O.o
Yes, the SIM card interface is very simple, even today. It's the authentication and software that is difficult.
its a shame we can't get or use any adapter to get these phones working on todays networks. these phones were good simple etc
Could make a LTE to 2g translator
Remember pre paid phone cards 😂 they were the same size as that Telstra mobile one. I had one. Those were the good old days 🤣
I was messing around in the RF Test menus on a Note 20 Ultra and stumbled upon a menu item for "disable sub6/mmwave antenna." Curiosity got the best of me so I clicked it and now my phone has no IMEI number!
What code did you use to get to that point
The problem with the early version of Startac was the SMS didn't display sender's Contact name, instead only displaying the phone number.
Wow, that is quite an oversight. Though I suspect that due to SMS not being that popular at the time, most people didn't realize this. It would have just really annoyed the more tech oriented people.
Remember seeing a friend getting this mobile phone from the Vodafone shop (UK 🇬🇧). He had to pay a £0.01p deposit.
My first cell phone when I was 15. I feel old lol.
Now figure out how to solder in a 4g radio so we can use one again. Be the hero!
Loved that second version
wouldnt it be easier to use a RPI with gpio pins to do stuff like this?
I honestly wish these phones were still usable or china would make 5g versions. I miss these phones...
But what kind of freaky little creature do you get when you hit it with the Allspark?
was still such a cool phone though
I loved this video. I'm a StarTAC fanatic. I have a Windows 98 Thinkpad I use with PEMASTER to unlock and resell these phones on ebay. It's been a good side hustle. I can also change the startup logo with this software. A few years ago, I came across a prototype StarTAC that accepts a normal mini sim, but is tri-band. It looks like a starTAC 130, but supports 1900MHz GSM like we have here in the states, at least until April of 2024. It never found a network. It searches and doesn't find anything. A 7000g or similar with the same SIM connects fine. I don't have a test card for this phone. Would you be interested in tinkering with it? I love your channel and would be happy to send it to you. Message me if you're interested.
A prototype StarTAC that looks like a 130? Yes, of course I want that! Send me an email, address is on the about page. I'm also envious that you have networks that can still use StarTACs.
Janus do you have polish roots?
I don't. It's just that the best phone hackers come from Poland and Eastern Europe, so I have been following their work closely for a while.
12:54 (1080p HD) a few frames of that second contain a corrupt horizontal line in your video.
Dont understand why U'r obcessing over the sim card size its Obviously a small sim placed on the card for easy insertion. I wish that phone was still available today
The cultural phenomenon of designing the phone according to the size of the SIM card is worth noting. Also check out MKBHD recent comments on SIM card sizes, fascinating :)
ruclips.net/video/-BwUyTrU9fo/видео.html
bro is jacking into the Matrix
That's so cool
It is sad that in modern phones such options are hidden even deeper.
I hope that at some point it will be possible to have modern smartphone with both hardware and software opensourced.
Fairphone gets close.The OS it runs on (Android) is open-source and the hardware also to some degeee
@@tezcanaslan2877 if I understand correctly, most drivers for Android are closed source.
Example of really open-source OS is postmarketOS, but for some reason it have big problems with camera support.
can you check your audio gear ? you got some electrical humming in the background
Thank you, I have been working to remove the hum. Hopefully better in other recent videos.
@@JanusCycle im not sure on how good your graphics card is, but if it is at least equivalent to an gtx 1060 then try out RTX Voice, or if you got any RTX card try using nvidia voice, with those two programms you can let most of the background noise be filtered out.
It is maybe a bit too agressive and cuts away a bit too much but it is worth the try as it is basically free if you got one of the cards
What is the link to the Janus pages
Here you go,
web.archive.org/web/20050204004728/www.tele-servizi.com/janus/motpages.html
Thanks so much janus
Is there a way to reach you like via email or something I recently managed to make my own really cool gsm project I wouldn't want to mention here what it does but you will definitely be interested.
I was looking through old stuff and I found an old navman icn device, it got my interest and now I desperately want to unlock it to be able to install window ce on it, but i couldn't find any new informations and updated links about how to do that, I really wish you would make a video about it as it looks very interesting :(
The most steady soldering hand in existence....
The CDMA/GSM phone of its time.
Wait, is THAT why Sim cards were always on full-size cards?
Hi...
I need help, please. I have a Motorola phone I285 that is locked with a special code and I cannot use my SIM card with it. I searched a lot for programs and tools that would enable me to change the serial number or remove the special code, but unfortunately I was unsuccessful. Can you help me with this matter, please?
Nothing in this video can do those things. I think only someone with EMMI Box equipment can do that. I don't know any more about this because I don't have one of those.
subed. is it possible to solder a new 4g radio on to these?
I know someone who put a 4G module in an original Nokia 3310
@@JanusCycle do you know if these old phones use AT commands to speak to the radio module?
So our credit cards are just sim cards?
Janus Pages? No relation? Are you sure?
*looks around* No, I don't think it was me :)
I do want the original authors to receive the credit they deserve.
Very nice I make the same things with Emmi box +