polprog 17.11.22 ;; work in progress - comments welcome
Some information related to POCSAG terminals (the pagers)
Advisor is a large pager with 4 lines of text and a total of 7 buttons. Mine is branded with "METRO-BIP", a large Polish pager network provider of the era. Back of the pager lists the operating frequency, serial numbers and a note that a reward will be given if found (although I dont think you can redeem it anymore). The holder comes with a belt clip. I think it's very stylish ;)
The pager wakes up with a loud screaming beep when you inser the AAA battery. To turn the sound off, press any key. To turn the pager off hold down the side button and then press the red button shortly as instructed.
The pager case is made up from two plastic shells. To open the pager you need to remove the battery cover first. Then you have to take off a flap that locks two halves of the pager together. The flap is concealed pretty well. If you look at the bottom edge of the pager you will see a rectangular piece of plastic - that's the locking flap. Insert a small blade under the side of the rectangle from the right hand side (the side where the lanyard mount is). The rectangular piece will bend up and you will be able to pull it out (see pictures)
Then the pager is easy to unclip. There are no wires between the halves. The bottom half contains the vibration motor connected with spring contacts.
The pager's internals are typical. Two boards make it up - the mainboard and the RF board. The modular construction is necesary because the pagers operated on many different bands.
The RF board is essentially an ultra low power radio receiver. I believe the output from that board is basically demodulated signal (other possibilities are IF, but I think that's less likely).
;; TODO: RF board pinout? I def need to reverse engineer the RF board, there is a great deal to learn
The pager's mainboard contains a few Motorola ICs with internal part numbers. Of particular interest is the one labeled 29V43. It contains the pager's memory.
;; TODO: take it apart further to see the LCD fix possibilities
I'm currently working on reverse engineering a tool for these. My aim is to reprogram them with my own capcode and frequency. The frequency can be tuned slightly as long as it's within the SAW filter passband. For larger changes the SAW filter also needs to be replaced
[The other one] Biper FM?
Biper FM (or at least that what I think the model name is) is a Flex pager, a newer construction. It's smaller, and has a single line display.
