Jailbreaking iPhone 3GS Tool Available Now

While Dev-Team is waiting for iPhone 3.1 firmware to release its iPhone jailbreaking tool, geohot has released a tool ahead of them. As of this writing, the tool is available for Windows (not Windows 7). A Mac version is coming soon.

You need the latest iTunes installed on your computer. The download web site is purplera1n.com.  Click on the Windows logo to download purplera1n.exe . Run purplera1n.exe on your Windows computer to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS. After iPhone reboots, run Freeze on your iPhone.

Nextar 43LT Original Configurations

Nextar 43LT runs on iGo Amigo which has a lot of settings you can change through sys.txt and system.ini. I want to keep a record of the original settings just in case I do something bad.

sys.txt is in iGo directory of the storage card and system.ini is in iGo/save . Note that there are back slashes in the configuration (e.g. lang_path_hint="lang\Lang_English-us.gro"), Wordpress is notorious about deleting back slashes. So, do not be surprsied that these back slashes got omitted in the future

sys.txt

[device]
type="nextar_q4-lt"

system.ini

[gps]
gpstime="1246455665"
last_gps_date="2009.07.01"
last_gps_time="13:41:05.037"

[interface]
theme=""

[keyboard]
panel_alpha="Default"
panel_numeric="Numbers"

[map]
rasterorder=""
viewpreset_front1="30,100,7200,10"
viewpreset_front2="140,7000,6000,10"
viewpreset_top="600,50000,225,10"
viewpreset_front3="140,7000,6000,10"
3d_dem="3"
3d_landmarks="1"
3d_buildings_distance="3"
follow_gps="1"
rotation="0"

[map.car_display]
car="Sports_Car/car"

[navigation]
autoreplan_action="OFF"

[other]
last_activation_warning="2009.07.01"
activation_warning_today="0"

[other.naviextras]
first_use_date="2009.06.30"
reminder_check_date="2009.07.01"

[power]
powermgm_state="0"

[rawdisplay]
class="wide"

[regional]
language_lcid="1033"
language_key="english US"
lang_path_hint="lang\Lang_English-us.gro"
voice_key="tts_loq_eng_us_m1"
voice_path_hint="voice\Voice_TTS-loq-eng-us-m1.zip"

[route]
route_type="FAST"
allow_special="1"
can_stop_on_highway="1"
allow_uturn="0"

[screen]
nightmode="0"

[smartzoom]
auto_follow_time="1"

[sound]
sound_muted="1"
os_volume="199"
os_muted="1"

[timezone]
index="29"
auto_index="143"
tzdst="1"

[tmc]
saved_config_available="1"
saved_config_classname="NMEA_GPSTMC_ROYALTEK"
saved_config_portname="COM"
saved_config_port="4"
saved_last_tuning_mode="1"
saved_last_frequency="975"
auto_tuning="1"

[warning]
speedlimit_warning="1"

Free Windows 7 Upgrade

As the release day of Windows 7 draws near. More and more manufactures are offering free or low cost Windows 7 upgrade. I am compiling a list of current offerings.

The upgrade is for computers with Vista Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. That means most of the netbooks out there are not qualified for this upgrade unless they are pre-installed with Vista Home Premium or above.

MacBook (Early 2006) Audio Driver for Vista

The Windows 7 Beta on my MacBook was about to expire, so I reinstalled Vista on it. After the installation, I put in the Leopard DVD and installed the drivers. Initially, the drivers installation was not successful. I just downloaded the BootCamp 2.1 update from Apple and intalled it. All the drivers except the audio driver were installed.

I tried different methods to install the missing audio driver, but Vista cannot find the proper driver for it. My other MacBook (early 2008) uses Realtek driver, so I thought this uses the same driver. I downloaded the latest driver from Realtek and tried different versions and they all failed to install.

Finally, I looked up the VEN(DOR) ID for the device and found that it’s from SigmaTel! I installed the SigmaTel driver from the Leopard DVD and it started to work right away. I am not sure why the BootCamp drivers installation did not figure out the right driver the first time, but I learned that I’d better checking the VEN(DOR) ID next time I ran into the same problem.

Just in case you don’t know how to check the VEN ID. You can right click on a device in Device Manager and select Properties. Under the Details tab, select Hardware Ids and you can see the VEN ID and DEV ID.

Here is a screenshot of one example.

venid

In this case, the VEN ID is 1106 and DEV ID is 3403. After you know the VEN ID, you can use the site like PCIDatabase.com to search for the company.

Checking iPhone 3GS Availability

3gs-avail

It has been about a week since Apple began selling iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 3GS is in short supply. The site for checking in-store availability of iPhone 3GS is open now.

Apple’s iPhone 3GS Availability Checking Tool

It appears that the 16GB white iPhone 3GS is the most popular model. If you are in the market for one, grab one while you can.

VLC Player No Sound on Fedora 11 under VirtualBox

If you have experienced no sound problem for VLC player on Fedora 11 under VirtualBox, you can try the following steps.

  1. Click on Tools -> Preferences.
  2. Click on Audio on the left.
  3. Under Output section, change the Type to ALSA audio output.
    vlc-nosound
  4. Close VLC player and invoke it again.

If the sound is still not working, try to select other types of auido output and see if it works.

Pre-Order Windows 7 Now and Save 50%

w7-preorderMicrosoft has finalized the pricing for Windows 7 and will have a special offer starting tomorrow (6/26/2009). You can pre-order a Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49 or a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for $99. Click on the link below to find out participating retailers.

Windows 7 Pre-Order Offer

I’ll also update the post with direct links to the retailers when information becomes available.

Here is a partial list of participating retailers.

How to Download Free Games for iPod Video 5G and 5.5G

I ran across this article today. Even though I don’t have a comparable device, I think some of you might be benefit from it.

The article is for changing the firmware of iPod Video 5G or 5.5G. With the new firmware, you can download some free public domain  games. The tutorial is for Windows computers. Scroll down the page, you can find some brief info about how to do it on a Mac.

Click on this link to read the full article.

iPhone OS 3.0 USB Tethering Requires iTunes 8.2

One new feature of iPhone OS 3.0 is the ability to do tethering without additional software. Unfortunately, this feature is not enabled in US. For those people whose iPhone carriers that support it, here is a tip. If you want to use tethering via USB, you need to install iTunes 8.2 on the computer. iTunes 8.2 provides necessary driver for your iPhone to act as a Mobile Device Ethernet. Otherwise, the phone will be recognized as a camera.

Jailbreaking iPhone 3.0

I really like some of the jailbroken applications like PDANet and Cycorder. When Apple released iPhone 3.0 firmware last week, I thought I was going to wait for a while until the jailbreaking utilities are ready for the new firmware.

It took only a few days for the iPhone Dev team to publish the jailbreaking tools. The new recommended tool is now readsn0w. Note that it works with original iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Touch 2G and iPhone 3G. It can jailbreak the supported devices, but it can only unlock the original iPhone, not iPhone 3G. If you have a locked iPhone 3G and you need to unlock it for other wireless carrier, you have to wait for a while.

Here is the link to the download page for redsn0w. The steps are really easy. You just need to use iTunes to upgrade firmware of your iPhone. Then, you can use redsn0w to jailbreak it. iClarifiled has tutorials for the procedures if you like to see some screenshots and the locations for the firmware download.

redsn0w Windows Tutorial

redsn0w Mac Tutorial

I tried it last Saturday and found the steps easy to follow. The only problem I had is to put the iPhone to DFU mode. You have to follow the instructions precisely. I suggest you read the tutorial several time before you attempt it.

After my iPhone was jailbroken, Cydia crashed several time when I tried it. After several tries, Cydia seemed to behave normally.