Using an old BlackBerry as a portable SSH or Telnet terminal
rqsall.com
rqsall.com
PostmarketOS is my current "Favorite" FW for hopefully getting some old devices back into service, mostly for interfacing with some IOT installations. They are working to get the Mainline kernel to run on many old(er) devices, since these days only a correct DTB is required to boot on nearly anything. (iiuec)
Edit: TIL the original blackberry OS was a strange embedded java VM. (I’ve never owned a blackberry)
Also, for anyone having to use SSH on a more unreliable network, like slow/spotty 3/4G, I highly recommend Mosh[0], it's been pretty much essential for me.
It keeps the connection open even if the network drops, and automatically reconnects when possible. Typing without lag is also nice (it even shows an underline below text that hasn't yet reached the server), although you'll want to use screen/tmux if you need scrollback.
The only annoyance I've had is that you need mosh installed on both ends, as well as the same font encoding/locale (don't really know much about this).
[0]: https://mosh.org/
... in which case maybe it's all good?
For example, I'm using the original Nexus 7 as a MIDI interface (virtual piano) for FL Studio even though it's a 2012 product.
I just keep it as my kitchen laptop for playing music, watching YouTube and looking up recipes. It's completely noiseless, has pretty good speakers, and since I replaced the drive with an SSD 6 years ago it's pretty quick as well. Even the original battery still holds about an hour of charge if needed. Laptops just don't age the way they used to.
I have a smattering of old gear around the house. Some being used for their original purposes, and some doing things they weren't designed for.
My wife has an old iPhone 5 plugged into an AM transmitter she found at Goodwill for a whole-house radio station. When she wants to hear her music, she just clicks on the cheap-as-chips radio in the room where she is.
My wife has a four-foot-tall early 1950's console radio, made in East Germany, that she uses as both an amplifier and a stand for her state-of-the-art 2019 record player.
I have a 2002 iLamp running OSX Leopard that I use as an iTunes media server. The current AppleTV interfaces with it flawlessly.
I have a 2006 U2 edition iPod that I use occasionally to move files between computers. I found it at the bottom of an elevator shaft in 2010.
I have a TRS-80 Model 100 that I occasionally use to write stories on. Every six months or so I transfer the documents to my main computer via null modem as a backup.
The computer I use every day is a 2011 MacBook Air. (Though I plan to get one of the new ARM MacBooks as soon as they're available.)
I use my iPod shuffles (1st and 4th generation) almost every week. I think they're the ultimate music playback machines, thought the 1st generation ones don't like modern headphone plugs.
When I drove for Uber, I strapped a couple of $5 Goodwill Nooks to the headrests of my car. I put a series messages on the screensavers to display to my passengers. Things like the week's weather forecast, amenity information, and a QR code they could scan to take them to a web site with local event information.
Everything from Google Services Framework to the Play Store is disabled. There's not much point striving to remove it - those are all system apps, making them easy enough to disable, and uninstalling them won't net me aby additional useable space.
Notifications still work well, battery life lasts at least a day and a half, and the phone is fast and responsive despite the older SoC and "scant" 2 GB of RAM.
Also, having a physical keyboard with a Ctrl key makes SSHing around so much more handy. The Key2 was my first PKB and I'm here to stay as long as there's devices :)
> In our proof-of-concept demo, this attack currently takes less than two days, using malicious Javascript to generate traffic.
> Keeping a web connection alive for two days may not seem very practical, but it worked easily in the lab.
Oooookay...
Excellent slide-out keyboard, great for typing fast and accurately with thumbs.
Good screen for small fonts. Touch sensitive but also pen input, never had any difficulty selecting small text in SSH for copy-and-paste.
I used to do most of my email over SSH and Mutt, using the N900 as terminal.
The next step was to setup a "monitor" user with separate keys and a restricted shell that invoked those menus.
keyboard: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32878312498.html screen: https://www.adafruit.com/product/338
The Blackberry terminal he describes can be charged and thrown in a pocket for days or weeks. It can be used easily and comfortably on a subway, an airplane, or a restaurant. No wires or dongles or multiple pieces of kit talking to each other via the airwaves.
You could also hook up an external hard drive and a couple of battery packs to a Raspberry with a bunch of wires, but it's still an inferior solution compared with an iPod.
I thought the carrier had to have BB specific APN or something to download MDM config, even for personally owned phones, much like iOS activation but can only be done over cellular.
A friend of mine brought his on a trip to a Central American country and got a local 3G SIM card for the week. After returning home and switching back to his US SIM card, Internet worked but all of the Blackberry-specific stuff like email and BBM was broken.
RIM customer service said, nothing we can do. You have to ask the Panamanian carrier to change those settings, and if they can't or won't, then you'll have to buy a new phone.
You're commented prompted me to take out my Passport again, and we'll see if things have changed, thanks.
When a phone nerds buy a phone they make sure which operator use which band or which bands are extension of which bands or which subtypes of a phone supports which bands before they proceed to buy one.
e.g. if a guy wants a phone that support Band 1, 3, 5, 7 and operator A use 2, 4 and 7 but only on rural, while operator B would use 3, 5, 9, 11 but 9 is basically 1, then he’d get a SIM from operator B.
Old Nokia had suffixes to commercial name like E71-1 for NA or E71-2 for EU and so on, as well as model number like RM-123 that each covers most bands in a region. Apple use different model numbers like A1234 for APAC, A1345 for Sprint US, A1243 for rest of US etc etc. On Samsung it’s N3546 for Korea and SM-i3456 or something like that, Sony/Sony Ericsson was XXnni for international and XXnna for CONUS at some point, sometimes completely different like “Xperia Something W12345”.
I can’t pull up BlackBerry scheme out of my memory but I think it was similar to Nokia.
Such a lovely phone though. Now that I have it I can't imagine using anything else.
You are likely to eaten by a grue though.