Unlocking the iPhone

So my dad’s been looking to get a smart phone so that he can purchase stocks over the web while he’s at work. Unfortunately the company he works at doesn’t provide internet access to employee’s computers.

Anyway, initially I was looking for mobile broadband solutions, where he could stick an USB or PC Card device into his laptop and just go online like he normally does. Unfortunately, all mobile broadband services at all the service providers I looked at (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon) all charged $60/mo for about 5GB of bandwidth. Verizon did have a cheaper plan at $40/mo, but only came with 250MB.

I then started looking at tethering options. With tethering, the data plans for T-Mobile is only $20 extra per month. Only certain smart phones allow tethering and if you search online, you should be able to easily find a compilation like this: How To: Tether Your T-Mobile Smartphone as a Modem (2008 Edition)

I asked Derek for his advice in this regard and he mentioned that tethering to the phone is a bit cumbersome and definitely a disadvantage for my dad. He’s not technologically-impaired, but the fewer the components, the better for him. Derek suggested that I consider the iPhone. It unfortunately doesn’t support tethering (yet), but its screen is pretty big and simple to use. I decided to do some research.

I started looking at prices on eBay and then remember that Xyon might actually still have his old phone since he upgraded to the iPhone 3GS recently. I pinged him asking if he still had it and was willing to sell it or not. We reached an agreed upon price and I just needed to confirm with my dad if he was okay with the iPhone. He visited a cell phone store and gave the iPhone a whirl.

He liked it, but wished it had a stylus since he has big fingers. I looked into stylus for the iPhone. I recall the regular stylus don’t work since the iPhone uses human capacitance to detect fingers, it would have to be some special pen. A quick search resulted in the Pogo Stylus, which cost about $10. I went to DealExtreme and found they had several variations of iPhone stylus and I suggested my dad pick up one of these for $3.45 since it had the best reviews/ratings.

Anyway, I got the iPhone today and spent most of tonight trying to unlock it. The same sets of instructions for unlocking the 3.1 firmware were plaster across the web: Unlock iPhone 2G/3G with Firmware 3.1 on Windows. Unfortunately, I hit into the issue where it would be stuck in the “Preparing iPhone for restore” phase and eventually return a 1604 or 1600 error code. Researching this further, it looked like a common issue many people where hitting: How to Jailbreak Unlock iPhone 2G 3G OS 3.1 Custom Firmware.

I tried the suggested solution of getting iH8sn0w’s iREB which would apply some patch to ignore these errors, but never was able to get my screen to flash white/red. It would just remain off.

I gave up after several attempts. I also had issues flashing to an earlier version as iTunes 9.0 didn’t like iPhone firmwares before 3.1.

Before calling it a night, I decided to give it one more try. I installed iTunes 8.2.1 on my laptop (since I didn’t want to touch my existing iTunes installation on my main desktop) and decided to try to flash back to 3.0: Unlock/Jailbreak 3.0.x (iPhone 2G) Using RedSn0w – Windows. It actually worked without a hitch. I inserted my T-Mobile SIM card for testing and was able to make a call to my VoIP line.

Looks like it’s a success!

By the way, the iPhone should come with a paper clip. It took me forever to find something that I could actually stick into that tiny hole to pop out the SIM card holder. Needles and tacks didn’t quite work that well.

Unlocking PAP2 Adventure

So I had quite some fun unlocking the PAP2. And by fun, I really meant headaches. First sign of trouble was when I noticed this PAP2 came with the 3.1.9 firmware which makes it impeccably harder to unlock than anything before.

However the guides posted on B$: Linksys PAP2 Unlock Info also included instructions on unlocking for firmwares 3.1.9 and higher, however they’re much more difficult. When unlocking my previous PAP2, all I had to do was setup a TFTP server and force it to upgrade the firmware. However the latest firmware prevents updating the firmware without administrator access and the admin password isn’t provided.

These new instructions required me to setup the following:

  • TFTP Server
  • DNS Server
  • HTTP Server

The instructions also called for setting up a DHCP server, but I decided to use my router to do that.

I ended up using SolarWinds TFTP Server, SHTTPD, and Simple DNS Plus. At first I wanted to use IIS that comes with XP, but I was hitting into issues with permissions and I just didn’t want to deal with that.

I pointed *.vonage.net to my main box that was hosting the the TFTP server and HTTP server. Following the directions, I created a similar environment that the PAP2 would try to connect and update the firmware with, which required getting the actual encrypted updated xml, but replacing at the location of where the new firmware is supposed to be, with something that I had.

After doing the 1st step, I hit into a snag. No longer was I able to access the PAP2 via the browser nor would **** access the IVR (interactive voice response) system. However, looking at my DNS and TFTP logs, I noticed that it would still try to connect to different address at *.vonage.net. I thought I’d just “bricked” my PAP2 and began looking replacements for it on Amazon. Meanwhile, I left a message for Diggler on the forums telling him about my situation and asking if it’s recoverable at all.

Diggler comes back and tells me the good news. Turns out I didn’t kill my PAP2 and this was expected if it was able to get the encrypted xml, but not the updated firmware. The updated xml file told it to disable web access and if I continue to hit *s, the IVR system will eventually come up. With the ability to reset the PAP2 now that I can access the IVR system, I would be able to repeat this for as many times as I want.

So I decided to check the logs on my SHTTP server and even though it was sending the file, the logs show 404. Someone else said they were having problems with SHTTP and said wxWebServer had worked for them. I also tried this, but it didn’t work and no logs were generated. I finally gave up and decided to go back to IIS and BAM! It worked!

The rest of the unlocking steps were pretty straight forward.

Other useful guides:

I then setup GrandCentral to IPKall to FWD and now line 1 at my parents house is a new number they can use to receive calls. I was surprised that sticking the PAP2 into a line 1 jack actually made all the line 1 jacks in the house work. Derek had told me that it’s worked for him, but I had little luck back at my place. Then again, I really just plugged it into a jack and then plugged in a phone in a different jack, and that didn’t work.

With the web UI, they can also make calls, but that’s a blog entry I’ve been meaning to post for some time. Maybe sometime soon.