?change phones carrier id in the low level system?

midiology · #1 (**permalink**) 03-31-2008, 12:22 PM

Ive probably asked this question 10 times, but never got an answer,,, and now I know why,, I wasnt asking the right question...
at first I didnt know exactly what I needed to know so my questions were very vague...

but after a lot of research I think I know what I need...

I am with alltel,, and with my original ppc-6800 I was able to flash the unofficial sprint release and use either dcd or nuerom etc, and all was well,, so when the official release came out, I flashed my phone with it, but my puter bluescreened halfway through basically giving me a paperweight,,,

I got another new 6800 from alltel, but this time I decided to put it in the box and stick it in the closet, because at the wireless store I work at, I had a brand new mogul that I was going to set up on the cricket network,, so I decided to take this one and use it instead,, so that way if I screw this one up I always have my original...

Here is where the problem inlies...

This new mogul is from qwest...

I loaded oli 2.40 then mtty'd to the phone, and supercid the phone, loaded the official release, at the setup screen i placed into bootloader, flashed one of many roms that i tried, and the phone functions perfect,
except the da** roaming indicator is on....
I ran ##33284 and checked I am on the correct sid and nid, I am authenticated under hdr,..
so unknowing of why this would do this,,, I used mtty to change the cid to allte001, downgraded back to the official alltel wm6 factory rom,,, just to see what was up...

even with the stock alltel radio/rom it was roaming,,, and after flashing to the original alltel radio/rom, qwest sh** still kept popping up in epst.

Now after quite a bit of reading, I have found that phones are programmed on their lower level system with carrier id,,, basically like the bios on a computer... and no matter what rom/radio you have on the phone, this information stays intact... thus this qwest phone will always think its supposed to be on a qwest network no matter what...

So the phone polls a tower, it receives the carrier id from the system it is programmed to be on from epst, then matches it against the carrier id stored in the lower level, if its a match then voila, if not the ril comes on... even though its not roaming...

has anyone came accross a way to get to this programming?

I found out that the phone does have a lower level programming mode,, called download mode... if you hook yours up to qpst, then open the filesystem backup utillity and click on ce filesystem, and try to do a dump of the phone,, it takes the phone out of diagmode/dmrouter and blacks it out and puts it into download mode,,, but this new mode requires 2 different data interface drivers that I cant find,,,

I didnt know if maybe the drivers could be found, that we could possibly do an entire dump of the phone, then decompile and find the original carrier id, change it , then restore to the phone...???

please feel free to chime in,,,

midiology · #2 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 03:25 AM

Bump...

wow I knew this would be a tough one.....

midiology · #3 (**permalink**) 04-03-2008, 10:47 PM

And yet another Bump...

badutahboy · #4 (**permalink**) 04-03-2008, 11:13 PM

I'm not sure that your assumptions are necessarily correct....

I've flashed numerous moguls (and hundreds of 6700's) to cricket, and never had a roaming indicator appear. Cricket's infrastructure is totally seperate from sprint's (AFAIK), so the problem you're describing "should" manifest itself on my phones, if your assumption is true...

I don't have any real input to give you, except that I think your assumption about Carrier ID is probably not correct, at least not entirely..

Also, when it comes to flashing phones to cricket... stick to Alltel and Verizon phone's where possible... They're not MSL locked, and they just seem to be simpler in an all-around sense..

My guess is that there's some setting in PST that hasn't been updated which is causing your roaming indicator.. but I'll openly admit I'm talking out of my @ss to an extent, since I've never encountered your specific problem.

FWIW, I use a custom rom on all my phones, built from the DCD kitchens, and I always update via activesync..

midiology · #5 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 09:51 AM

Hey thanks for the reply,,,

I work for a wireless center,,, and My job is to flash phones and repair damaged ones,, I probably flash about 50 phones to cricket a month,, and have never had a roaming light either,,,
So for the longest I was under the same assumption as you,,,
But here is the pudding...
Cricket uses an older archaic prl system known as "IS-683A" its basically a simple and primitive tower listing system compared to the newer prl system that alltel uses known as "IS-683C"
what this means is that the prl system that cricket is using at this moment, will not show a roaming indicator no matter what phone it is,, unless it is actually roaming,,, at least if all my reading and assumptions are correct...
but with the roaming agreements, and data roaming agreements that sprint,alltel,verizon have together they have to use a more complex roaming list setup for interorginization billing and whatnot...

Also, This new mogul im using that is branded for qwest,, I had originally programmed for cricket, and it worked fine,, no ril on at all... and I have taken an entire qcn qpst backup of my original alltel mogul and transferred it to the one im having the problem with.. so as far as an issue with some setting that is in epst that is not correct, I just dont believe so..

also another piece of info... I super cid the phone,, and flashed the stock alltel rom/radio to this phone.. then went into qpst and loaded my qpst backup,, changed my banner to alltel, and got it all set up,, then proceeded to flash the newer radio and dcd rom onto the phone... when I got through flashing the new rom/radio, I went back into my epst and the damn nam1 was renamed back to qwest,,, and the banner was renamed back to qwest again.. so Im assuming that this follows along with what Im saying, and basically kind of proves my point...

the only way this will ever get fully answered is when we can find a way to unlock the nvm on this dang phone to allow read write access,, then I could freely search the file system for what im looking for...

if anyone else has any thoughts please chime in....

**puff** · #6 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 10:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by midiology

the only way this will ever get fully answered is when we can find a way to unlock the nvm on this dang phone to allow read write access,, then I could freely search the file system for what im looking for...

if anyone else has any thoughts please chime in....

well this might help, then again it might not... either way, check it out:
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=21837

*edit* to save you a click -> http://www.mobile-files.com/forum/sh...4&postcount=82

badutahboy · #7 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 12:20 AM

*whoosh*

and now you're over my head!

Sorry I didn't have the answer for you.

midiology · #8 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by badutahboy

*whoosh*

and now you're over my head!

Sorry I didn't have the answer for you.

I do sincerely appreciate the help though...

I have gotten a little closer,, I think,,, I believe its also got something to do with the eri "enhanced roaming indicator" setup on the phone... I dont believe that is all of the problem,, but it is part,, im sure...

but as long as there is not a way to unlock the radio security fully to access the filesystem,, this isnt going to happen....

and PPC_NOOB,,, thanks for the link,, I also appreciate your effort,,
but to the dismay of us all,, I have super cid this phone every way it could be done,,
I have changed it to 00000000, 11111111, and SUPERCID. and to no avail when I use bitpim or qpst, the nvm is still locked,,, and also I used cdma workshop to scan for readable memory addresses,, and it could only come up with 3 memory ranges that werent blocked,,, the rest were unreadable,, so
this is a toughy,,, for sure...

but hey i do appreciate the replies...

c3ajeff · #9 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 10:43 PM

I have a Qwest branded Mogul too and would like to switch it to Verizon - is there any hope or do you think I am wasting my time?

Someone else on this list told me just to flash the ROM to a Verizon ROM but after reading what you wrote I'm thinking it ain't gonna happen...

Verizon says if I can "unlock" the phone, they can work with it...

Jeff

midiology · #10 (**permalink**) 04-06-2008, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by c3ajeff

I have a Qwest branded Mogul too and would like to switch it to Verizon - is there any hope or do you think I am wasting my time?

Someone else on this list told me just to flash the ROM to a Verizon ROM but after reading what you wrote I'm thinking it ain't gonna happen...

Verizon says if I can "unlock" the phone, they can work with it...

Jeff

well,,, as for your question... My qwest mogul is performing perfectly on alltel... all works,, but its just the roaming indicator that is causing me grief,,, because it does cause the data to get a little sketchy from time to time,, but other than that it is doing fine,, although since it thinks its roaming when it is not,,, I am sure that if I go to an area where I would have to roam on sprint, the phone would probably take a crap or get confused,,, now I dont know that for sure,, because I havent ran into that situation yet....
but hey go ahead and give it a shot on yours,,, its worth it...