iPhone recovery

Well, after just getting an iPhone off eBay I've found it's got an error 1015, which means it was jailbroken! I've found a nice little tutorial here which might work.

Yep, it worked. But no sim. Ended up jailbreaking version 3.1.2 with blackrain but the new sim card doesn't work. I found this which looks promising. This has got a good list of all the firmwares that are available.

So, at the moment I have iOS 3.1.2 which is jailbroken with blackrain. The trouble is that it doesn't like the sim card. This might have something to do with the baseband. This is the firmware for the modem. I found this page giving a brief description. I have baseband 06.15.00. This person has baseband 05.14.02 and his is locked to AT&T but he has iOS 4.2.1. I can only assume that this baseband does not like the modem (is not compatible). I would like to take it back to what it normally is.

In the end I would like a factory iphone and then go from there. I've found this which explains how to downgrade the baseband to something normal. This can be unlocked so it's not completely pointless.

I shall start by simply letting iTunes update the phone normally. It's probably going to go wrong but we'll see. Yep, doesn't like it, as soon as it reboots it goes straight back to the DFU.

I re-did it to version 3.1.3 and it says that the sim is not valid for this phone. It basically means that the phone is not "unlocked". I have two choices, one is unlock it officially, the other is to unlock it unofficially. It looks like o2 charge £15! But I recon that is worth it. But I need to find out which carrier it is locked to?

Well, after finding an old o2 card lying around the house (a bit of a fluke), looks like something different is happening. It now says "Waiting for Actiation" "This may take some time".

Just found an informative website which says that if you are not the original owner then it is difficult (maybe impossible) to get it unlocked!

Just found this post which says how you can get around the recovery loop in 4.2.1 version. - Didn't work!

So, I've just restored successfully to 4.1.0! Works beautifully. And now to unlock it. But first to jailbreak! So I've found this post. Bloody complicated but it's working at the moment. After this the plan is to install the unlocking software which is called ultrasnow.

Yep, worked a dream! Next was this post. A little long also, but worked also. Must note that it did come up with this error when installing ultrasnow. But seems fine.

Error
http://apt.saurik.com
netdv:open nodename nor servname provided, or not known


I did notice that it disconnected from the wireless and this might have prompted the error messages. Anyway, it now says "t-mobile" and I've just rang the home phone!! Yay!!!!!

Creatures - the game - fixes and docking station

Well, Jakeh has remembered the creatures game he played many years ago, and how much he enjoyed it. So I decided (he made me promise) to install the game on Windows 7. Doh! That was a mistake, doesn't seem to like Windows 7 as it was originally built for Windows 95. Even tried in compatibility mode!! Found this website which is the games development website involved in Creatures. They've got all the downloads. I tried one of the patches but something goes wrong with unzipping it.

I did find a free game download called "Creatures Docking Station" which looks like it'll work in newer versions. I installed it and it comes up with the game in the background, but in the foreground a username and password is required. The link for registering doesn't work. Only found out  a day later the registration website has moved to this. But after filling in the form it doesn't let me log in! So I've emailed them to sort it out. I did find some fixes for this common problem here. Although someone does say in the forum that it does work!!! I've not tried the fixes yet. I've also found there is a patch (crack) for the docking station.

I shall add to this blog when I find out more