Motorola C139 V1.9.24 Won't Load from osmocom-bb

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Michael Spacefalcon msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG
Wed Apr 2 04:37:34 UTC 2014


Christophe Devine <devinechristophe at gmail.com> wrote:

> I had a similar problem with a tracfone branded c139 (ftmtool error).

I guess I was lucky that the first two C139s I got from ebay were the
Cingular branded version, which has the classic Compal bootloader
enabled.  But I just opened the one that came in Tracfone packaging,
and indeed the bastards have disabled this bootloader in TF firmware:
it proceeds directly to the ftmtool crap, without ever sending PROMPT1
or pausing to check for a possible download.

> On IRC, Hoernchen mentioned an older post where the author "fixed" the
> bootloader. He also mentioned a pastebin that referenced a tool called
> mot931c. I managed to find it and could successfully reflah my tracfone's
> bootloader, which now loads osmocom-bb without issue. Here's the reuploaded
> software package:
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByHQWL5Q6bSwdkJReUlJWUQ1Z3M/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for sharing.  I'm trying to understand how this works.  It looks
like with both Calypso and Compal bootloaders disabled, the only way
to make the initial break-in on a TF C139 is through the firmware's
RVTMUX interface.  I have not yet tried running that mot931c.exe
Weendoze binary under Wine; I've only run strings on it so far, and I
saw the instruction to enter **16379#.  Keying this magic incantation
into a C139 or C140 (both TF and vanilla) yields a menu that allows
switching the headset jack between headset and trace functions.
Selecting trace causes the jack to be switched back to the UART (like
it is on power-up), and looking at the data the running fw spits out,
I see TI's classic RVTMUX interface, albeit at 57600 baud instead of
TI's default of 115200.

But this is where I get stuck: even though the interface is clearly
RVTMUX and includes the ETM module (TI's Enhanced Trace Mode), none of
the classic ETM command packets do anything.  I get ETM packets back
with the correct checksum, so I infer that ETM must be present in the
fw, but all response packets I could get consisted of just a 0x0E
error code octet instead of the expected ETM_CORE responses.

Has anyone figured out just what this (presumably) closed source
mot931c.exe binary sends to the phone?

About to try running it under Wine, and if that succeeds, then strace...

VLR,
SF




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