Comment by ethbr1

2 years ago

My parents have some old Gateway amplified computer speakers. Came with the 386!

They still work perfectly... except for a regular pop of noise every few seconds that would intermittently show up, that scaled with the volume setting.

It turned out, their portable phone (read: landline with short-distance wireless RF handset) would ping from the base station to the handset, if it were off the cradle, which was being picked up by the unshielded line-level audio cable and amplified.

Moved the base station further from the cable, pop disappeared.

6 comments

ethbr1

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valbaca  2 years ago

Remember how old speakers would let you know if you were about to get a cellphone call. It was like digital precognition haha

  • genewitch  2 years ago

    you can still hear cellphone and wifi noise in crappy amplifiers - i have two sets of active muff hearing protection - the ones with microphones on each earpiece, and if you get inbetween a beamforming WAP or near any wifi antenna, or near a cellphone, you get "brrz bz bz bz bzzzzzz tiktiktiktiktik".

    But this is different than the old <2g/edge phones, which wouldn't interfere unless you were about to get a call - because the tower said "where's this phone?" and your phone would max out it's tx and say "here i am!" and that's what you heard. This is probably incorrect, but based on my observations this is what occurred.

    Remember the doodads you could put on your startac style phones on the antenna bit, with LEDs in them - they'd light up when you were about to get a call, as well, by design!

  • astrange  2 years ago

    Speakers haven't really changed in 50-60 years, it's the phones that changed there. If you got a call on 2G today it'd still happen.