VoIP on Orange Nokia N82

Orange have disabled the Internet Telephone menu on the Nokia N82 to prevent their subscribers setting up VoIP accounts using the built in SIP stack. You can still use Fring but you can’t use Truphone, Gizmo, etc.. Also, Orange customer support are clueless as are Nokia customer support. I’m being generous here, my opinion is they were directly lying to me. Only Carphone Warehouse were honest about the problem.

To get a working phone you have to debrand it. I managed this with the Nemesis Service Suite (NSS), the EURO 1 product code, the Nokia Software Updater (NSU) and a hard reset.

With NSS (Beta 1.0.38.14) I did the following:
1. Installed choosing Virtual USB device.
2. Started in PC Suite mode (N82 set to PC Suite mode throughout).
3. Clicked on the magnifying glass.
4. Phone Info > Scan
5. Product Code > Enable > Read
6. Entered the EURO 1 product code (0549174)
7. Write
8. Tools > Full Factory > Reset

I restarted my phone just to make sure this hadn’t bricked the device.

With NSU I had to set up Comodo Firewall just so as NSU uses some odd ports, amongst other, less than sensible, programming decisions by Nokia. I was then able to reflash the firmware (v.20.0.062).

Next you have to reset the device so it uses the new firmware. I tried the reset using * + 3 + “Call button” simultaneously while turning on (aka Vulcan nerve pinch) but that didn’t seem to help so I used Ezra’s instructions for a hard reset. Now all the menu options are enabled!

I restored just my contacts list from PC Suite and nothing else. Now I have Truphone and Gizmo working no problem at all and I’ll try to set up Sipgate next.

Here are some other folks experiences: Nokia N82 Debrand & Update, Eric’s Corner.

USB drive portable apps

My 1GB USB thumb drive (or flash drive) is over two years old and it’s seen a lot of action. In fact, too much, as it’s cooked. I mean this quite literally – it runs very hot and misreports itself, completely dropping off the other day. It’s being a bit quirky now but I have a replacement, a SanDisk Cruzer Micro Skin 8GB. This seems like a good time to record how it’s set up as it’s had a lot of tweaks over the last couple of years. I ran with a 256MB thumb drive before that so there’s been quite a bit of expansion in how I use my usb stick. The main thing that’s changed is that it now has exclusively free software on it.

I’ve created three top-level folders: Data, Downloads and Program Files. The only files at the root are a ReturnIfLost.txt, a launch.bat and an AutoRun.inf. As the drive sits on my keyring the ReturnIfLost file has anonymous details in it (and the offer of a small reward)!

xxx@yahoo.co.uk
+44xxxxxxxxxx
20UKP reward for safe return!

The launch.bat is:

@echo off
REM Launch portable apps
cd "Program Files\PStart"
start PStart.exe

The AutoRun.inf is:

[AutoRun]
open=Launch.bat
action=Launch

Obviously, some app called PStart is required. This an extremely useful utility from Pegtop Software that puts a panel into your system tray from which you can launch any of the programs you’ve set up on your thumb drive. Within this panel I’ve created four top-level folders: Development; Internet; OpenOffice and Utilities (which could do with some sub-folders as it runs to over thirty apps now). Where these have ‘Portable’ in their names I’ve removed it as that gets tired, quick.

Development

CassiniWebServer
CSVed
GIMP
Notepad++
NVU
QueryExpress
SQLiteSpy
UPX executable packer

Internet

AM-DeadLink
FileZilla
Firefox
GoogleEarth
Pidgin
ProxyGet
Skype
Tor
utorrent
WinSCP

OpenOffice

(no need to list these, it’s the whole sheebang)

Utilities

7-Zip
Audacity
BonkEnc
CCleaner
DeepBurner
ClamWin
CloneSpy
Driver Magician
Floola
Foxit Reader
FSViewer
GnuCash
KeePass
Launchy
MagicDVDRipper
MD5 check sums
PhotoRec
ProduKey
RemoveDrive
Restoration
ShellMenuView
Stellarium
SyncToy
TestDisk
TightVNC
TrueCrypt
VirtuaWin
VirtualDub
VLC Media Player
WinDirStat
WipeDisk

Also SDelete and PsTools which I just use from the command line. That’s some 600MB of software! The only one of these which isn’t a straight download is Skype where I took the skype.exe from the desktop install, ran it through the UPX executable packer, and dumped it on the thumb drive. It’s 12MB and it’s version 3.0.0.198 but it works fine. It requires the following command line parameters:

/datapath:"Data" /removable

so that folder needs setting up …

All of the above programs are installed to the Program Files directory.

The Data folder has a few sub-folders: Backup; KeePass; misc; music; avatars; pictures; scripts; and work. It also has a .tc TrueCrypt file of approximately 128MB. The TrueCrypt file has a folder structure below it that, once mounted as another drive, can hold anything that should be encrypted. You can also have a Program Files directory here for any programs that may have a lot of write cycles to the flash memory, the advantage being that they will be run exclusively from memory once the TrueCrypt drive is mounted. As it works as a drive you could even have an SVN repository here. In theory I could put everything into a TrueCrypt file but then I’d always need admin rights on a machine before I could use my thumb drive and I’d have to enter that really long, complicated passphrase every time I plugged it in.

The music, pictures and work folders are usually empty, only being used for occasional transport duties. Backup is used almost exclusvely for my FEBE backups to transport Firefox extensions from one machine to another. Downloads tends to have just a couple of small utilities that I want on any machine, like GNotify, and otherwise works as another temporary transport folder.

Multiple partitions on a USB key drive

I’m creating multiple partitions on a USB Key (or Flash or Thumb) Drive. Data is shared between partitions and I’ll be able to boot any partition from the drive.

The drive in question is a SanDisk Cruzer Micro Skin 8GB. SanDisk don’t have a utility for flipping the removable bit on the drive and without that XP will not allow the drive to be partitioned. After much reading (the following threads were extremely useful: 911cd.net, msfn.org) and experimenting I’ve finally managed using the Hitachi Microdrive Filter (xpfildrvr1224_320) and adding the correct registry entry to the cfadisk.inf (USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_SanDisk&Prod_Cruzer&Rev_7.01). I then updated the driver (Device Manager > Disk Drives > “USB Drive” > Update Driver) and was able to use Disk Management to create four FAT32 primary partitions.

I used UNetbootin, the Universal Netboot Installer, to install Puppy Linux, UBCD, and Xubuntu. The Portable Apps are described in another blog post. I need to get WinGrub working and then I’ll update this post.