Community update, Thursday, December 20 2007

[ian douglas]

> GSM Firmware Update
> -------------------
> We are still waiting for the signed agreement allowing you to update the 
> GSM firmware yourselves. Meanwhile, we have resolved the difficulties I 
> was having in performing the upgrade, and I am now able to upgrade your 
> handsets. Anyone interested in having me do this should contact me at 
> michael at openmoko.org.


Michael was decent enough to have me ship my GTA01 to him a few weeks 
ago to do some testing with this GSM firmware upgrade. He was also nice 
enough to install some recent version of the firmware on the phone for 
me too since my version was rather old. The GTA01 came back a few days 
ago, and I've just gotten around to doing some quick testing on it.

I'm happy to say that the TMobile SIM card that wouldn't work with the 
GTA01 before will at least recognize a network is available and attempt 
to dial out. I reported a while back on the list that the SIM card which 
says "39.01a" on the side couldn't be recognized at all, but now seems 
to at least connect to the TMobile network, report signal strength, and 
at least attempt to make a phone call. Unfortunately the dialer just 
sits at the "Outgoing Call" screen and doesn't actually ring my home 
phone number.

The AT&T 3G SIM card I got with my new BlackJack II (bought one the day 
it was released), which has a serial number reported on the wiki page as 
being one that works with the GTA01 ("71234 O 4022") not only recognized 
a network and connected, the test phone call actually rang my home phone 
and I had a pleasant conversation with myself for a few seconds -- don't 
tell my therapist... I worried that my apartment complex has a lot of 
buildings around it and that perhaps the higher frequency band wasn't 
strong enough and that only the 850MHz signal would get through (which 
as we all know isn't available on the GTA01), but my Neo made the call, 
which has me pretty happy.

Overall, I'd be happier if the TMobile card worked with the GTA01, but 
we're a step closer. I don't know (yet) what the cause is, but the GSM 
firmware now at least recognizes the SIM card and connects to their 
network -- anyone know if this is perhaps just a case of needing a PIN 
number for the SIM, or how I'd go about getting the PIN number from TMobile?

So Michael, a very hearty public thanks (!!!) for upgrading the GSM 
modem firmware for me.

Ian