Cingular/AT&T to Unlocked GSM Hack As posted 6/18/05 at
Treonauts... Pre-req that UNEASYsilence's instructions left out: The GSM update page at PalmOne mentions upgrading a few things like DocsToGo and Zap2016 (these were the only two listed that applied to me) before doing the upgrade. On my system, I upgraded both of these to the latest version. 1) I started with an AT&T (Cingular, but without the Cingular logo on the case) GSM Treo650 with the 1.0.4.1 firmware. I sync'd over bluetooth and backed up my system. I have a few extra SD cards, so I took one and blanked it out. 2) I downloaded the 1.23 upgrade referenced in the instructions. I unzipped it and had a new "PALM" folder. I copied the folder straight to the SD card. I then set my email clients (GoodLink and Snapper) to not auto-retrieve, turned off my radio, removed my SIM card, and removed my primary SD card, then did a soft reset. 3) The phone booted up and I popped in the SD card with the 1.23 update and followed the prompts. At one point, you have to click OK and it appears to do nothing, but just click it once. If you wait 10 to 30 seconds, it proceeds. I saw the progress bar, some scrolling text, then it reset itself prompted for my language, reset again, prompted to setup the digitizer, reset again, etc. 4) After all was done I popped in my SIM card and checked the phone version... it was at 1.23. Perfect so far... 5) Next I downloaded the 1.13 Software Updater (for firmware 1.28) for unlocked GSM phones from the Palm website and unzipped it. 6) Next I went into Palm Desktop and created a new user called UPGRADE. 7) First, I removed the SD card containing the 1.23 upgrade and my SIM card, then from my PC ran the executable that does the update (this is where I found out my USB sync cable is bad. I'd been sync'ing over BT for so long, but after loading 1.23, I couldn't get a bluetooth connection working properly. Thus, with no BT and not USB cable, IR was my only choice (thank goodness I had choices). I setup hotsync on both ends to use IR and let it run. For me, this process took close to an hour. I'm sure it would've been much faster via the cable. 8) The upgrade instructions tell you to sync and go through the reset hoops, then return to the installer and click next to go to step 2 of 2. I did this and it prompted to restore my data. At first, I was a little paniced as it said it was ready to "restore data for user UPGRADE", but I clicked next anyway and was presented with the choice to create a new user or use an existing one. I chose my normal sync ID and let it run. It restored all my data, again over IR, in about 30 minutes. When all was done I was quite disappointed to learn that I had only gained about 1 or 2Mb of extra space (went from 6.1Mb to 7.8Mb free). But then I went into SnapperMail, copied all my mail to the SD card, deleted all of my mail from the phone, then restored it back from the SD card. Afterwards, I had 17.2Mb free... quite an improvement. The last thing I did was to go back to Palm Desktop and delete the UPGRADE user, then perform a final hotsync. I popped in my SIM card and regular SD card, did a soft reset, then went over to PowerRun and told it to re-create all my shortcuts. One thing I found was that I had to re-run Dataviz-tech (which I normally leave in phone memory) and told it again move everything to the card. It prompted about progs already on the card and asked if I wanted to overwrite. I chose yes and all is working just fine. I now have Firmware 01.28 and Software: Treo650-1.13-ROW. And in my bluetooth settings, I now have a "Dial-Up Networking" option. Odds are pretty good that PalmOne will make an update to disable this "update hack" and protect precious Cingular/AT&T from unscrupulous individuals like myself. As such, I'm putting both the 1.23 zip file and 1.28 zip files on my website for future generations to abuse, errr... I mean enjoy. :) |
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