🚀 go-pugleaf

At 18 Jul 2010 00:01:45 -0400 nospam wrote:
> In article <Xns9DB8EB62D8FF7noonehomecom@74.209.131.13>, Larry
> <noone@home.com> wrote:
> 
> > Verizon had a mall store, here.  Right over the middle of the sales
floor, 
> > they had a "cheater repeater" that even the cheap phones always had
full 
> > scale signals inside the store.  The mall, itself, had poor coverage
as the 
> > nearest tower was about 2.2 miles away.  It has a tower almost in the 
> > parking lot since the Alltel aquisition, now.
> > 
> > I used to carry my bagphone to the food court just outside the
Verizon 
> > store and "make a call".  The powerful 3 watt AMPS monster swamped
the hell 
> > out of the store's cheater repeater....(c;]
> 
> nope. bag phones were limited to 1.2 watts and handhelds to 0.6 watts.
> only carphones could do 3 watts.

Huh?  Bagphones, from manufacturers like Motorola and Nokia, were
literally "bag phones"- a car phone shoveled into a bag with a big-ass
12V lead-acid battery to power it.

Most car/bag phones had a "power saving" mode that could kick the 3-watt
transmitter down to a smaller output (0.6 to 1.5W depending on the
make/model, IIRC- my Nokia switched between 1W and 3W.)  That worked on
both bag and car phones, (to save car battery reserves when the car
wasn't running.)

My Nokia used a 4-pin molex plug for power- there was a different power
harness ipacked with the car-mounted version and the bag version.  The
car mounted version had wires for ground, 12V switched (live when car
running), 12V continuous (live always) and horn relay (to blow the car
horn when the phone rang.)  The phone would always operate in 3W mode
when the 12V switched input was fed, and when the switched input was dead
(car off) it used 1W or 3W depending on your "power save" setting.

The bag version was the same phone brick and handset, but the molex feed
only had two wires- ground and 12V continuous which snapped into a power
interface that both the battery and the charger connected to.