Is it just me or does the website raise a cipher mismatch error when trying to access it?
Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
31–40 of 169 posts
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#32Seems we hugged the site to death :(
Here's an archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20201213003741/https://computer....
EDIT: Seems to be back up.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#33I had (and probably still have) a Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner from the late 80's. Even pre-Internet, instructions on how to bypass the cellular band block were easily found on Fidonet and local BBSes, and all it involved was removing a single diode. https://www.wentztech.com/radio/Equipment/Pro2006/pro2006mod... It was really a golden time for snoop...er..listening to cellular phones because they were so enormously…
Stories please!
Back when i was in high school in the late 90s/early 2000s there was a website, i think called cellphonescanner (.) com that had a realmedia stream to listen to analog cell conversations around NYC and Toronto or something like that. It was great entertainment.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#34Cordless phones were more "fun" to scan since it was generally your neighbours you heard just because of the range of those things. Also baby monitors were (and probably still are) wide open. Literally a 24/7 mic broadcasting for anyone to listen to. Pagers were also easy to listen to. You'd get short messages without context. A lot were office to doctor or dispatch to tradesperson.
As a person who also did this, I feel like it has encouraged my suspicion of communication privacy. All it takes is listening to your married neighbor talking to their boyfriend/girlfriend to realize that someone could be doing it to you. The difference now is that it doesn't have to be within a 150 foot radius.
Many years ago, I worked for a guy who regularly monitored mobile phone frequencies and recorded conversations. He wrote screenplays and used the recordings for dialog study. At least that was what he claimed.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#35The requirement that scanners not be a silly modifiable to restore the AMPS bands was loosely interpreted. On certain older RadioShack scanners, you could unsolder some diodes on the main logic board and full coverage would be restored.
This is often the case for amateur radio equipment as well - transceivers are configured not to transmit outside the licensed amateur bands, but there is often a simple modification (cut a PCB trace, remove a component, etc) that happens to remove those limitations.
These are often called "MARS mods", since the Military Auxiliary Radio System uses HF frequencies that are outside the amateur allocation.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#36*in the USA. Radio receivers and scanners sold outside the USA, even if they are made inside the USA, have no restrictions. US manufacturers usually label these radios as "export" versions. It reminds me of the early days of web browsers when "export" versions of Netscape and IE only supported a maximum of 56-bit encryption for SSL.
I would imagine SDRs with "export" software are easy to get and can tune in.
SDRs don't have the 800Mhz restrictions.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#37*in the USA. Radio receivers and scanners sold outside the USA, even if they are made inside the USA, have no restrictions. US manufacturers usually label these radios as "export" versions. It reminds me of the early days of web browsers when "export" versions of Netscape and IE only supported a maximum of 56-bit encryption for SSL.
The limit was 40-bits for a while. Maybe briefly in the late 1990s the export limit was 56 bits, but all of the EXPORT cipher suites in TLS 1.0 (from 1999)[0] have limits of 40-bit symmetric keys, or a NULL cipher. Also the RSA and DH moduli for export cipher suites were limited to 512 bits.
[0] Page 60 of https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2246.txt
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#38I had (and probably still have) a Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner from the late 80's. Even pre-Internet, instructions on how to bypass the cellular band block were easily found on Fidonet and local BBSes, and all it involved was removing a single diode. https://www.wentztech.com/radio/Equipment/Pro2006/pro2006mod... It was really a golden time for snoop...er..listening to cellular phones because they were so enormously…
The funniest thing was that people were convinced that you could cut more diodes (if only you knew which ones) and enable more hidden frequencies. They couldn't understand that this was a one-shot deal. I imagine there were quite a few that ended up destroying their scanners trying.
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#39Hi all, I am the author. I 1) have no idea how this made it to the top position, 2) now feel much guiltier about posting so infrequently, 3) apologize for the design of my blog being almost actively hostile to users, but then maybe that was the point?
Why do I recognize your name ?
There's some hazy link here between "JB Crawford" and Kuro5hin and ... ? Or is that just a coincidence / faulty link in my memory ?
Re: Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
#40Hi all, I am the author. I 1) have no idea how this made it to the top position, 2) now feel much guiltier about posting so infrequently, 3) apologize for the design of my blog being almost actively hostile to users, but then maybe that was the point?
I love your website design.