Jason Zerbe's draftbook | building digital products and services

Snapdragon 8655 MDP adb and fastboot setup on WinXP

01 Nov 2011

I finally found the full developer specs on my 8655 MDP (BSQUARE) (mirror), along with the USB driver installation instructions (BSQUARE) (mirror).

The USB driver installation instructions that BSQUARE published are rather out-of-date for working with version 15 of the Android SDK. This documents my current driver setup on my 32-bit Windows XP machine.
  1. Download and Install the Android SDK (v15 at time of writing)
  2. Start up the SDK Manager GUI (pop open the Tool -> Options menu and select "force https source to be fetched over http", had some weird errors otherwise) and install: Tools -> Android SDK Tools, Tools -> Android SDK Platform-tools, Extras -> Google USB Driver package
  3. After the odiously slow process finishes, copy [Android SDK Root]\extras\google\usb_driver to [Android SDK Root]\msm8655-mdp_usb_driver
  4. Open up the android_winusb.inf (inside of the newly created directory) file in Notepad or other non-format appending text editor. Clear out the contents of the [Google.NTx86] and [Google.NTamd64] paragraphs so that they just contain the following:
    [Google.NTx86]
    ;BSQUARE MDP8655
    %SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0956&PID_9025&MI_00
    %CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0956&PID_9025&MI_01
    %SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0956&PID_9025&MI_02
    [Google.NTamd64]
    ;BSQUARE MDP8655
    %SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0956&PID_9025&MI_00
    %CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0956&PID_9025&MI_01
    %SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0956&PID_9025&MI_02
  5. Create and/or open the C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\.android\adb_usb.ini file and make sure it just contains the hex string: 0x0956
  6. Power on your device and connect it to your development machine. Be sure to point Windows to your newly created USB driver directory for your MSM8655. If Windows is unable to find the needed driver(s), point the dirver search to the original USB driver located in [Android SDK Root]\extras\google\usb_driver. If Windows still does not find the necessary driver just hit finish and go without. This seemed to be the case when I rebooted into the bootloader on some occasions.
  7. Restart the SDK and see if your device is connected - [Android SDK Root]\platform-tools\adb.exe devices - should spit out "1234567890ABCDEF device".
  8. For a working fastboot binary for flashing, one can grab a fresh copy from the android-roms project [info] or the one I used for this tutorial from my dropbox [link]. Once you download: unzip and move the .exe to [Android SDK Root]\platform-tools\.

T-Mobile WAP APN settings

31 Oct 2011

NOTE: no more free T-Mobile web service with keyword hole.

I have been playing around with my new Android 2.2.1 dev phone, trying to port over the free webaccess I am able to get on my old Motorola J2ME feature-phones (Razr V3r, V195s).

Interesting that these two devices have slightly different APN settings. Able to mess around with these settings after using P2KCommander v6 to modify the seem to show the "Web Sessions" menu and allow setting the default session.

On my V195s:
Name: t-zones
Homepage: http://wap.myvoicestream.com
Service Type 1: HTTP
Proxy 1: 216.155.165.050
Port 1: 8080
Domain 1: [empty]
Service Type 2: WAP
Proxy 2: 216.155.165.050
Port 2: 9201
Domain 2: [empty]
DNS 1: 000.000.000.000
DNS 2: 000.000.000.000
Timeout: 5 minutes
CSD No. 1: [empty]
User Name 1: [empty]
Password 1: [empty]
Speed (Bps) 1: 9600
Line Type 1: ISDN
CSD No. 1: [empty]
User Name 2: [empty]
Password 2: [empty]
Speed (Bps) 2: 9600
Line Type 2: ISDN
GPRS APN: wap.voicestream.com
User Name: motV190
Password: motV190
On my Razr V3r everything else is the same except for the username and password:
User Name: motV3
Password: motV3
And from the automatic MCC and MNC detection app I made:
MCC = 310, MNC = 260
I am able to enter all these values into the APN settings on my smartphone, but last time I tried to connect the settings were erased. I suppose I will need to do some setprop shenanigans to re-enter the settings once the T-Mobile tower erases them.

modifying Opera Mini for Android

24 Oct 2011

NOTE: no more free T-Mobile web service with keyword hole.

NOTE: For the moment I do NOT have free mobile web-access using this method. I am trying to get this to function on T-Mobile's network with Android 2.2.1 with a valid pay-as-you-go SIM card in a similar way to my previous J2ME Opera Mini v4 patching walk through. I am pretty sure it has something to do with the APN settings. Download the modded Opera Mini APK here.

Ingredients: I will be performing this process from a Windows XP x64 (Windows Server 2003 based) laptop. If you are following along from a Windows (XP+) computer, you can use my prepackaged apktool.zip archive.

Process: For more information on using the android-apktool suite, please see Use APKTool to Decompile, Edit, Translate and Recompile an APK.