Bell and GPS working, YAY!

[NFHimself]

I have been readin the forums and the various threads about GPS, 6.1, REV A, etc, and I decided to give it a go. After a few trials I now have a fast locking GPS phone on the BELL Canada network. Whoo Hoo!

I would like to thank everyone on the forum for all the information, especially Old Man Jenkins for his custom Bell rom.

Tips:

1. Flash the radio but don't hit the screen to start anything when it boots up. Windows can active sync without the today screen being open.

2. You can flash back to the original rom, just have to use coke 0.40. Any time I like I can get back to what my phone was like when I bought it. I did this 5 times successfully.

3. If anything goes wrong, losing your data connection, etc, you can reactivate your phone to restore your internal settings, using ##your msl# after doing a reset via ##786#, this clears everything including your phone number, msid and sid/nam . Check epst in your windows folder for your sid/nam and any other info before starting flashing, just in case you need it at some time. The phone number and msid are identical unless you ported your number in.

GPS: What works well for me on Bell.

I am using radio 3.37.15 with OMJ's custom Bell rom. It has gps today, but not the most recent version with geo tagging. This may or may not be important. I have it working now and I didn't want to mess with it by installing it to see.

I installed the boot loader 2.31, flashed the radio, didn't let it customize, flashed OMJ's custom rom. Tried GSP Viewer and it was detecting com4 as being a gps but nothing really happening. So, in and of itself, just flashing to OMJ's custom bell rom didn't succeed in getting gps to work. Remember, I am talking about Bell, not Sprint.

This is what did the trick for me:

I extracted all the files from PPST_080407_7500_SPCS_2.03.sa.CAB, renamed them to their original names by looking in _setup.xml. I tried just copying ppst.exe to the windows folder, however it is just an installer, without data it does nothing. I had tried just installing the cab, but I didn't like the fact that my today screen turned blue, I didn't know what else it was doing.

So I copied these files to my windows folder:

Default.ppst
PPST.exe
WriteDMData.exe
DMData00.DAT

and

Customize.lst

which just contains full path links to the previous files. Probably not needed since the reference to PPST.exe is in the file and I doubt it would run itself via a list. But that is what I did, probably not 100% ideal, but it worked.

Then I ran ppst.exe from windows and it allowed me to update. it restarted the phone and then I did a test with gps viewer, within 10 seconds I have 5 satelites. I tried gps today and it worked immediately. My PRI did not change, btw, as far as I can tell via epst, but it did something to get GPS up to full speed.

Hope this general information will encourage other Bell users to try this out, more details about the above can be found by searching the forums.

Thanks again!

[essence831]

Thanks for your sharing. I have got GPS working on my Touch as well. One questions though, when you use coke 0.40 to flash back to the original rom can you still have GPS running or not? I am guessing probably not... Reason I might want to go back to the original rom is because i can connect to the Bell Music Store.

[Duuuuude]

Great to hear you got GPS working!

Off topic but how do you get a hold of your MSL?

[NFHimself]

To answer your questions, when you revert back, yes, you lose your gps since the radio that contains it is no longer present. I used the may update ROM from Bell after installing the 0.40 coke boot loader. There is a program called GetSPC that you install and run from device memory as opposed to storage that will give you your MSL.

As an update to the PPST for Bell, the only thing your need is the sprint ppst.exe file, that is what contains the code to turn GPS on, I now use the Bell regular PPST updater with the sprint ppst.exe file and it works as well. It won't do anything at all without some data files however, so I am using the Bell files.

See attached cab, it just has the bell data with the sprint ppst installer program. All I did was replace the ppst.exe file.

Hope you find it useful.

[frad]

HI NFHimself,

Thanks for your post... very interesting. I myself am on Bell and just updated my Touch to OMJ's BELL OEM rom.

I have read in several places that running the PPST has helped people in receiving stronger GPS signals and faster locks, but have been hesitant to install the PPST since it really was not meant for our phone. Normally you don't want to update the PRI to that of another network. This post caught my eye since you seem to have extracted only the necessary files from the PPST cab.

My GPS is working though... just with OMJ's rom, normally I get 4-5 satellites, but the locks take a little while. In your case it was not working at all before installing the PPST?

How did you know which files to keep from the PPST cab... i am curious since I too am trying to figure out exactly what changes it makes. Thanks!

[NFHimself]

I'm no expert, just passing on what works for me, prior to doing this it was like waiting for water to boil, gps viewer would find the gps functionality, but it wouldn't retrieve data, a lot of ,,,1,,,3,,,etc instead of 0,23,54,34,23,43's, if you have used the program you will know what I mean. I have been playing around with this for a few days now, best results were with installing the sprint ppst cab, but I didn't like the idea of keeping anything sprint, so I flashed back to stock to make sure I was sprint free. The OMJ oem rom have sprint's music store in the cube, as does the custom bell rom, which I am not thrilled about, have to reassociate that to the HTC audio manager. But everything is working properly now, so I'm happy.

I ran the stock bell ppst cab and no gps, I had tried running the sprint ppst file by itself from a freshly flash OMJ rom, it did nothing since there were no data files. Also no GPS. I put the sprint ppst.exe in windows after running the Bell ppst cab, and voila, GPS works. So, if the only difference is the main executable installer, then that is the file that has the functionality.

All trial and error, lots of errors, but luckily with this forum, nothing you can't recover from.

[earthdan]

Hey thanks for the cab! I have been playing around with the ppst files and I had upgraded with the sprint cab that somebody posted while I was using omjs sprint full custom rom (I am on bell tho). My pri updated to 2.03... but I was finding that it was taking a while to get locks (albeit pretty consistent). I wanted to try out ghettos newest rom so I installed the rom and the gps stopped working (darn). I've just tried installing this cab and running the ppst and my pri is back to 1.33.007 (I think I started from 1.33.002 originally). I'll test out the gps and post my results soon!

cheers

[earthdan]

Well I installed the cab and ran the ppst from the windows file....Gotta say that there are no improvements as far as gps goes. I was driving today and it took about 10 mins to get a lock in gpsviewer. It worked but I tried getting a lock later and it hung....

Could the roms that I am using be in any way affiliated with the ppst file that I have been running? As in, I had the omj sprint custom rom going when I ran the sprint ppst file and my gps worked more consistently. Any ideas?

cheers

[NFSFAN]

NFHimself, I am glad to hear that the Bell PPST I posted in another thread worked out for you. So you say that the SPRINT PRI is not need eh? Hmm...I'm going to give that a go.

[NFHimself]

Originally Posted by earthdan

Well I installed the cab and ran the ppst from the windows file....Gotta say that there are no improvements as far as gps goes. I was driving today and it took about 10 mins to get a lock in gpsviewer. It worked but I tried getting a lock later and it hung....

Could the roms that I am using be in any way affiliated with the ppst file that I have been running? As in, I had the omj sprint custom rom going when I ran the sprint ppst file and my gps worked more consistently. Any ideas?

cheers

I find that if you are moving it will take longer to get a lock, what I have been doing is using gps viewer to get a lock, then start gps today and it's all good when driving. I have been reading NFSFan's new rom thread and it seems to help a few people there, maybe you can compare setups. I just have OMJ's custom BELL and the file I posted here and haven't had any problems, I didn't do any reg edits or anything like that.