Project : Mobira Dataman "Tutorial" on how to mod a 25 years old mobile phone to work as a HTPC.

Author: Jani 'Japala' Pönkkö Published: 25.08.2009 In English Suomeksi

Docking station

I wanted to keep the external appearance of the Talkman as authentic as possible. I also wanted to keep the unit modular, like it was in its original state.

This is the "docking station" between the central unit of the phone and the handset. Under the lid is the connector for external power supply for charging up the batteries etc. I wanted to replace this connector with an USB connector so I could hook up external devices to the finished Dataman.

Docking station open. Here is the circuit board that needed couple of traces to be cut and then resoldered to different pins. This allowed me to route two USB ports from headers on the motherboard to the handset and the docking station itself.

I ended up making my own cable between the motherboard and the connector on the docking station. Pins on the cable makes it possible to hook the handset module up with the rest of the phone as it did on the original Talkman. It is quite funny to see the Windows Device Manager to report new devices being connected when I plug in the handset to the phone.

What do you mean "this is a staged photo"?! There were quite a lot of wires to route and all of them had a potential to burn either the USB ports on the motherboard or even short the board itself.

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