Anyone know what this box is?
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Anyone know what this box is? I saw it on a telephone pole along a bike trail recently. It has a long antenna with two spiral sections sticking out the bottom.
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@alice Based on the label and the form factor, I'd say it's a (vestigial) Metricom "Ricochet" repeater. This was a low-speed 900 MHz wireless ISP that served various metropolitan areas until 2001.
Looks like the power cable has been removed.
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@alice They leased space on lampposts in the service areas. Customers accessed the service via a brick that hooked up to the USB or serial port on your laptop. It was much slower than we're used to now, but really great at the time.
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G gustavinobevilacqua@mastodon.cisti.org shared this topic on
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@mattblaze I still have a couple cardbus modems. While the USB and serial modems can talk directly to each other without a cell master, the cardbus models need a bit of coaxing constantly. So, just a bit less useful. @alice
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@sasutina13 @alice Ah, I didn't realize they had a cardbus version, too. I had the original and the later grey bricks (which are still around here in some box somewhere).
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@sasutina13 @alice I will never forget how cool I felt (but almost certainly didn't look) with my modem velcroed to the lid of my laptop, reading my email in a cafe. The future!
