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#81
Originally Posted by peterleinchen View Post
@pichlo
May I guess what happens?
If SIM do not have PIN request the swapping takes place immediately without any necessary interactions.
If a SIM has a PIN request just nothing will happen. No swapping no nothing until you restart csd (either by killall csd or phonet down/up).
Yeah, I'm expecting something like that. But let's have it confirmed if we can.
BTW, what happens in your dual doodah in the same situation?
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#82
Allright, i'm working on it right now. Opening the phone again to check pin.
Meanwhile here are some pictures to compare the two camera modules:
-This one is taken with the original n900 camera before the drop:


-and this one with the n97 module installed on n900 after the drop:


There is no big difference, but if you look at the leds of the raspberry pi, you can notice the led labelled "100" with n900 module it look white, and with n97 module it look quite orange wich is closer to reality.
 

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#83
I have tested sim swaping with pin and make some photos.

1. First i soldered some thin wires from the sim slot of n900 to the sim slot from a samsung phone:



2. started up the phone with the orange sim card in (you can see the operator logo):



3. Without turning off gsm, i removed the orange sim card and inserted the vodafone one with a pin code.
Almost instantly i was prompted with this screen:



4. after i inserted the pin code, a message popped displaying "gsm: vodafone", but the logo is still showing orange:



5. On this step i wanted to show that strange behaviour, when during a phone call you remove the sim.
So i put back the orange sim card and called miself from the htc tablet and remove the sim. (you can see the slot is empty)
It was possible to answer and talk without the sim card on n900!!!!

 

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#84
Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post
OK. Time to clear this sim swap mistery.<snip>
Thanks a lot for testing this, it was some very useful info! The only thing I *wasn't* surprised about was the fact that you can answer/talk without SIM card inserted - actually, it's "trick" known to most people that, as a kids, tried to "modify" old "brick" sized mobile phones, thinking that it would allow free calling

In fact, I'm more surprised/excited by the fact, that device instantly recognizes requirement to enter new PIN - it means, that N900 is more friendly to hotswap SIM mods, than initially thought. Generally, I'm not the fan of common saying "it was impossible, but then a guy who doesn't know that it is impossible came, and did it", but it seems exactly the case, here.

But first, we need to think about solution for:

Originally Posted by joerg_rw View Post
swapping SIM without applying proper procedure is as critical as removing uSD without unmounting and powering down the adapter. You later or sooner will damage your SIM by doing it, the latest when you remove it during a page-erase of the flash storage.j
I wonder, if applying the same procedures (on N900's side) as peterleinchen incorporated into his scripts for dual-sim adapters handling, would make it safe? I know that dual SIM adapters - even if used only in 007 mode - are not exactly the same thing, but device isn't aware of them, and sim-switcher scripts require to shut down everything SIM related before switch, anyway (then bring it up again, after command that forces adapter to switch circuity to 2nd SIM).

Summing it up, for the N900, it *seems* to be the same case - old SIM was present, new SIM is inserted, just "everything SIM" synced and shut down before. peterleinchen's swim-switcher is used quite widely, for a very long time, without even slightest reports of any damage to SIMs (no unconfirmed suspicious, even).

Also, on a slightly different note, for years, I'm constantly swapping my microSD card in device with magnet glued to cover (so no almost-low level hardware disabling of microSD). I just unmount partition/disable swap there (of course waiting, till operation ends and sync), and do physical removal - after inserting another card, I reverse operation. No problems with microSD, whatsoever - filesystem is healthy from high to low levels, after hundreds/more than thousand of such operations.

/Estel
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#85
Originally Posted by Estel View Post
"it was impossible, but then a guy who doesn't know that it is impossible came, and did it", but it seems exactly the case, here.
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."(Clarke's law)

I would incorporate this new sim slot in my n900, but there is no more room. Unless i get a mugen battery cover, but that woud make the phone look even fatter than it is

joerg_rw, but doesen't the magnet unmount the card properly? becase that was designed by nokia. Althought in my opinion they would do better to use a slot like the one on nokia n95: press the card down, wait to close applications, remove the card.
 

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#86
Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post
joerg_rw, but doesen't the magnet unmount the card properly? becase that was designed by nokia. Althought in my opinion they would do better to use a slot like the one on nokia n95: press the card down, wait to close applications, remove the card.
For the uSD card the magnet thing will just work. It's designed to work that way, that's why there's this magnet and hall switch. For SIM however there's no notification to modem about magnet removed (on hindsight I wonder why they didn't do it that way. I have no proper datasheets about bb5 modem chip but I'm sure it has the standard card-detect input pin, Nokia could have hooked up this to the hall switch just like they did for uSD, and place the SIM tray somewhere where you could swap without removing battery)

@estel: sure sync && umount and wait till finished is a 100% safe measure to avoid damage to uSD card. For SIM there's no umount or sync I know of, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Maybe some magic AT cmd will do exactly what we need, AT+CFUN=0 or whatever. Anyway dual-SIM-adapters afaik power both SIMs in parallel and without interruptions, they simply switch the CLK line between card1 and card2, and obviously they can check for activity on data line before they do.
But me is not the dual-SIM-adapter expert here ;-) I'm sure we will hear more experienced explanation on what exactly they do, pretty soon.

sidenote: it's not surprising that you don't need SIM during phonecall, the SIM is only needed for authentication. Once you're logged in to the network, SIM isn't needed till next re-auth which , I guess, will only happen on expiry of T3212 timer, i.e. usually several hours (<-this is straight from my a..., I'm just guessing, except for usual duration of T3212. Maybe re-auth gets triggered by other timers, other events, or not at all. T3212 is for the location update).

sidenote2: it's actually quite concerning that the modem immediately detects the swapped SIM. This means the card must have been active, and that implies you could have interrupted some write-cycle. Sounds scary. And I don't get it. For power saving reasons the modem is supposed to power down the SIM after short while of idle, and there's no reasonable way to detect removal / insertion of a SIM from/to a powered-down tray (that has no dedicated switch for that). Hmm, on second thought there *might* be one or two ways (weak pullup R [100k] on VDD)

/j
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Last edited by joerg_rw; 2014-05-03 at 00:17.
 

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#87
Originally Posted by joerg_rw View Post
And I don't get it. For power saving reasons the modem is supposed to power down the SIM after short while of idle, and there's no reasonable way to detect removal / insertion of a SIM from/to a powered-down tray (that has no dedicated switch for that). Hmm, on second thought there *might* be one or two ways (weak pullup R [100k] on VDD)
Exactly - I thought that with PIN-locked SIM card (with different PIN that the 1st one) either what peterleinchen supposed will happen (aka quiet nothing, no telephony functions and no messages), or the "telephony functions disabled" message will pop-up, just like when device lost contact with (as suspected earlier) sim tray or modem, due to broken solder.

BTW, it may indicate, that "all telephony functions disabled" is *always* a problem of broken balls under modem, and *never* broken contact of SIM tray, only. It may also indicate, why 90% of people experiencing that dreaded hardware failure are able to workaround it by inserting little springs under shields, to push modem into board...

/Estel
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#88
Originally Posted by Estel View Post
BTW, it may indicate, that "all telephoy functions disabled" is *always* a problem of broken balls under modem, and *never* broken contact of SIM tray, only.
I am not entirely sure about that. That may be the case if the "no telephony" error happens out of the blue while the device is switched on. If it happens on startup, the SIM authentication failure may well be the cause.
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#89
Originally Posted by Estel View Post
Exactly - I thought that with PIN-locked SIM card (with different PIN that the 1st one) either what peterleinchen supposed will happen (aka quiet nothing, no telephony functions and no messages), or the "telephony functions disabled" message will pop-up, just like when device lost contact with (as suspected earlier) sim tray or modem, due to broken solder.

BTW, it may indicate, that "all telephony functions disabled" is *always* a problem of broken balls under modem, and *never* broken contact of SIM tray, only. It may also indicate, why 90% of people experiencing that dreaded hardware failure are able to workaround it by inserting little springs under shields, to push modem into board...

/Estel
During the tests i never saw any message like "telephony functions disabled". However if i remove the card and let it like that for a few seconds a red sim card appears next to the signal bars, but after i inserted the new sim, it was gone.
The same thing will happen if you start up the phone without the sim, but in this case, even if i insert the sim, the red card won't go away. In conclusion, for sim hot-swap is necasary to start the phone with a sim card in it (any sim card).
The "telephony functions disabled" error occures almost certanly becase the device does not detect the gsm modem/chip, becase as estel said those solder balls under the chip got cracked (usually caused by the weak lead free tin used in modern devices).
However that can be easy fixed with a hot-air station.
In my case when i droped the phone i was certanly that the gsm chip must have lose contact and i will be welcomed wit "telephony functions disabled" error. But instead, main camera module got damaged, and the solder balls under the gps chip got cracked, fortunately i fixed them both.
 

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#90
Originally Posted by ryu1 View Post
Hello everybody. As i promised a few weeks back, i will post my some pics of my modded n900 . The idea behind this came from the need to be able to read a usb flash memory anytime, anywhere, withot carry usb adapters or cables (AND becase my htc x9500 is not very pocketable ). Also i decided (this was not really my idea) to be able to charge the phone anytime in the sunlight - so i sticked a solar panel (from an old solar charger) on the battery cover. However the solar charging is very very slow, and becase the pannel ios connected directly to the + and - of the battery, the n900 does not look like its charging, also no indication of charging in the battery graph either, but i made a test in wich i depleted the battery completly so the phone could not be turned on. i left it for almost 4 hours in direct sunlight and i got only 4 - 5 % just enough to turn the phone on and connect to wifi to check email. So yes the solar panel mod will only became usefull in case of a plane crash in a deserted island . On the other hand the usb mode is really usefull, and no i did not removed the mini usb port of the phone; instead i solder some wires from the mini usb to a host usb removed from an old cable. Here is a pic:


As you can see i removed the lock-unlock switch, but i solder a wire from its pad to an old nokia 3310 power switch to keep the function of the button. I did this becase the loc-unlock button act as option menu button in android (i also use nitdroid). Here is a pic of the new placement of the switch (you can also see the solar pannel):


Here are some pics of the modified case to fit the usb port inside, i also had to cut the resonance chamber of the right speaker:


Here are some more pictures of the motheboard:


And here some pics with the assembled phone:


Another note: Pali made a great application: Usb Host Mode New - that allows usb+charging. Becase i didn't removed the mini usb port i can use a modified charger to charge the battery and power the usb device connected to the other end of n900. The "normal" charger will not work with this mod becase it short-circuit the data pins of the usb port.
Also the mini usb port can still be normally used for pc suite and mass memory mode with normal n900 usb cable.

Here is one with the battery cover with the solar panel contacts:


If anybody want to do this to his/hers n900 it should know that the "mutilation degree" applied to the phone is high, and it also should have some basic electronic/soldering knwoledge. Also a soldering station is recommended becase mini usb contacts are really small.
But overall in my opinion it worth it. I have now in my pocket a device that can do almost anything (no more need of the htc x9500 )
I also tried to make a video with the usb host in action, but the nokia e72 (belonging to the person who helped me with this) i used for the pics, simply did not recorded anything (software problems)
Hello, a question, you know how to repair chip corrupt emmc 32 gb unrecognized, only 455.8 mb. It is possible to repair the emmc 32 gb?
 
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