Official Chinese Rom Update (5 May 2011)

[Guest hecatae]

this amss.mbn does not work on my blade even after switching rom to x880

[Guest wbaw]

I guess yes, this should enable 850MHz band (used in China) with the other China-wide bands, that's why it won't work in the UK.

cpg, great work on the code, I will begin to remake it in C# with a nice GUI :) Maybe an MBN/Partition handler + YAFFS2 manager too?

I have ztepack compiled for android ... i'll be updating my tpt backup/partition script sometime in the next couple of weeks, to use ztepack so that it works on all gen1/gen2 phones ... so if you want to do a gui, do it for android :unsure:

hecatae, did you install the image.bin tpt? similar to a gen1 tpt (menu, vol+, power on)?

[Guest hedgepigdaniel]

I have ztepack compiled for android ... i'll be updating my tpt backup/partition script sometime in the next couple of weeks, to use ztepack so that it works on all gen1/gen2 phones ... so if you want to do a gui, do it for android :unsure:

hecatae, did you install the image.bin tpt? similar to a gen1 tpt (menu, vol+, power on)?

now that is a good idea

[Guest fonix232]

I have ztepack compiled for android ... i'll be updating my tpt backup/partition script sometime in the next couple of weeks, to use ztepack so that it works on all gen1/gen2 phones ... so if you want to do a gui, do it for android :unsure:

hecatae, did you install the image.bin tpt? similar to a gen1 tpt (menu, vol+, power on)?

Erm, I am doing some more work on BladeTools (an old project of me including an update.zip editor, ZTE TPT generator (what you've already done for phones, now it's time to generate them based on update.zip files :) ), and now, Gen2 TPT too), that's why I am making a 'GUI' for it :P

For phones, what would you do there using this app? It's not good to edit such stuff on phone - even if an extractor and img mounter (mount -t yaffs2 -o loop,rw /sdcard/rom/system.img /systemtwo) for editing was implemented, it is a bad idea to edit them on a phone.

[Guest wbaw]

Erm, I am doing some more work on BladeTools (an old project of me including an update.zip editor, ZTE TPT generator (what you've already done for phones, now it's time to generate them based on update.zip files :unsure: ), and now, Gen2 TPT too), that's why I am making a 'GUI' for it :)

For phones, what would you do there using this app? It's not good to edit such stuff on phone - even if an extractor and img mounter (mount -t yaffs2 -o loop,rw /sdcard/rom/system.img /systemtwo) for editing was implemented, it is a bad idea to edit them on a phone.

Why is it not good to edit them on the phone? Surely it's much better? Certainly much better than forcing people to use Windows when there's no need for it. More reliable, faster, less copying & messing around. 'Even if an extractor and img mounter' <- they're integral parts of Android, no need to implement them.

Did you miss my tpt backup & repartitioning tool? Lets you backup & repartition your phone using a clockworkmod zip which generates a TPT. It will be fully Gen2 compatible soon, thanks to cpg & his work creating ztepack & hacking the splash image location & fastboot mode.

Also, there are going to be 4 different incompatible types of tpt soon, we'll have gen1, gen1 with gen2 amss/appsboot, gen2 & gen2 with gen1 amss/appsboot. If somebody tries flashing the wrong kind to their phone, it's either not going to work, or worst case brick it. So a Windows GUI to make TPTs is a very bad idea, it can only go wrong. There is no reason to be able to generate tpts from windows, it can all be done through clockworkmod, it's faster, easier & totally safe.

Edited May 11, 2011 by wbaw

[Guest fonix232]

Why is it not good to edit them on the phone? Surely it's much better? Certainly much better than forcing people to use Windows when there's no need for it. More reliable, faster, less copying & messing around. 'Even if an extractor and img mounter' <- they're integral parts of Android, no need to implement them.

Did you miss my tpt backup & repartitioning tool? Lets you backup & repartition your phone using a clockworkmod zip which generates a TPT. It will be fully Gen2 compatible soon, thanks to cpg & his work creating ztepack & hacking the splash image location & fastboot mode.

Also, there are going to be 4 different incompatible types of tpt soon, we'll have gen1, gen1 with gen2 amss/appsboot, gen2 & gen2 with gen1 amss/appsboot. If somebody tries flashing the wrong kind to their phone, it's either not going to work, or worst case brick it. So a Windows GUI to make TPTs is a very bad idea, it can only go wrong. There is no reason to be able to generate tpts from windows, it can all be done through clockworkmod, it's faster, easier & totally safe.

Yes, generating from phone. But, it would make easier some work, like I would like to TPT all the new nightlies of CM, so for that I need a TPT installer. And I can't be bothered to every time resize the /system partition, install the nightly, create the TPT and use that :unsure: I want to avoid this exactly.

So, I put the update.zip into BladeTools, add my modifications, and it will generate a valid TPT for me (Gen1/Gen2 style) WITHOUT the SBL and AMSS parts (as cpg said, those aren't needed, oemsbl only reads the partitions.mbn and partitions_zte.mbn, if a file or two is missing, it will jump over them). That WON'T brick your phone, and if I manage to port the new "Update FW fom SD Card" part of the ZTE firmwares, on Gen2 it will be a click to install them (after copying the image.bin in place). See my point now?

And by editing it on phone - your tool makes a TPT from a current install, mine will make one from 'scratch' (update.zip and your additions). Building from scratch, on Android, is a PITA. I hope you agree with me!

[Guest cpg]

[...], and it will generate a valid TPT for me (Gen1/Gen2 style) WITHOUT the SBL and AMSS parts (as cpg said, those aren't needed, oemsbl only reads the partitions.mbn and partitions_zte.mbn, if a file or two is missing, it will jump over them). That WON'T brick your phone, [...]

Just to emphasize this. It makes sense to leave qcsbl* and oemsbl out, as a bad/interrupted flash of those can brick a phone. As long as those stay as they are, the TPT mechanism will still be available even if it fails to apply the update.

Even though oemsbl is stored twice (it seems with some sort of checksum, so even if one of those goes bad, chances are the phone can still be recovered), i see no reason to change it as long as the phone boots normally.

Either way, i mostly code in C# nowadays, so it was good practice to write some C code to compile on whatever device you prefer :unsure: It was meant mostly as proof-of-concept, though!

[Guest fonix232]

Just to emphasize this. It makes sense to leave qcsbl* and oemsbl out, as a bad/interrupted flash of those can brick a phone. As long as those stay as they are, the TPT mechanism will still be available even if it fails to apply the update.

Even though oemsbl is stored twice (it seems with some sort of checksum, so even if one of those goes bad, chances are the phone can still be recovered), i see no reason to change it as long as the phone boots normally.

Either way, i mostly code in C# nowadays, so it was good practice to write some C code to compile on whatever device you prefer :unsure: It was meant mostly as proof-of-concept, though!

I planned to leave all non-necessary files out of the TPT, like recovery, userdata, AMSS, qc and oemsbl, and appsboot. That would produce a non-bricking TPT :)

[Guest Mahendra Soni]

Hi,

I am running "DELL XCD35 Froyo 2.2 Gen2" on my Orange San Francisco without any problem.

Today I downloaded China Unicom V880 "UNI_CN_P729CUV1.0.0B13-update_signed.zip" just to try and have a look on its features.

I have Clockwork Recovery 3.0.2.7 Gen2 installed and when I tried to flash this new China ROM, I got error message belew:

"Amend scripting (update-script) is no longer supported.

Amend scripting was deprecated by Google in Android 1.5.

It was necessary to remove it when upgrading to the ClockworkMod 3.0 Gingerbread based recovery.

Please switch to Edify scripting (update-script and update-binary) to create working update zip packages.

Installation aborted."

I tried using with RA Blade Gen2 v2.3 recovery but had below error:

"E:Can't chown/mod /system/wifi/wpa_supplicant.sh

(No such file or directory)

E:Failure at line 113:

set_perm 1010 1000 0750 SYSTEM:wifi/wpa_supplicant.sh

Installation aborted."

Can someone suggest a way to flash this ROM if its compatible with Orange San Francisco?

Regards.

Mahendra

[Guest hedgepigdaniel]

Hi,

I am running "DELL XCD35 Froyo 2.2 Gen2" on my Orange San Francisco without any problem.

Today I downloaded China Unicom V880 "UNI_CN_P729CUV1.0.0B13-update_signed.zip" just to try and have a look on its features.

I have Clockwork Recovery 3.0.2.7 Gen2 installed and when I tried to flash this new China ROM, I got error message belew:

"Amend scripting (update-script) is no longer supported.

Amend scripting was deprecated by Google in Android 1.5.

It was necessary to remove it when upgrading to the ClockworkMod 3.0 Gingerbread based recovery.

Please switch to Edify scripting (update-script and update-binary) to create working update zip packages.

Installation aborted."

I tried using with RA Blade Gen2 v2.3 recovery but had below error:

"E:Can't chown/mod /system/wifi/wpa_supplicant.sh

(No such file or directory)

E:Failure at line 113:

set_perm 1010 1000 0750 SYSTEM:wifi/wpa_supplicant.sh

Installation aborted."

Can someone suggest a way to flash this ROM if its compatible with Orange San Francisco?

Regards.

Mahendra

You'll need an older version of clockworkmod (<3 I think). A version so old I don't think it exists for gen2. Maybe Amon-RA willl be able to flash it? files.podtwo.com

[Guest wbaw]

You don't want to flash it, it's a chinese stock rom for chinese phones. It's also too big for any of the custom partition layouts, that's why amon-ra (and anything else) will fail to flash it unless you use the stock gen2 partition layout.

[Guest sm4tik]

I have ztepack compiled for android ... i'll be updating my tpt backup/partition script sometime in the next couple of weeks, to use ztepack so that it works on all gen1/gen2 phones ... so if you want to do a gui, do it for android :)

hecatae, did you install the image.bin tpt? similar to a gen1 tpt (menu, vol+, power on)?

Any news on this? I don't have windows around, so I've been waiting for another way to repartition my gen2 blade since day one. It would be just awesome if you get it working!

[Guest wbaw]

Any news on this? I don't have windows around, so I've been waiting for another way to repartition my gen2 blade since day one. It would be just awesome if you get it working!

It's tricky because of the different blade variants, particularly the chinese ones, flashing european bootloaders onto chinese phones makes them not boot because they only have 256mb ram. It's hard to detect reliably exactly which blade variant it's running on & we can't copy the hidden firmware files from the phone itself. So the package would need to contain a few different sets of firmware for every possible type of blade & know which ones to use.

If all blades & their hidden firmware were all exactly the same & compatible, then it'd be fine, the gen1/gen2 stuff makes it much trickier, with the risk of bricking chinese & other blade variants as well, it's not really worth it.

If we can find a way to backup the hidden radio firmware & bootloaders from the phone itself, that'd be the best way, then I'd give it a shot. Problem is it looks like the best way to do that is by hacking one of the first bootloaders which starts everything else on the phone, oemsbl.mbn - one false move with that & the phone is totally dead.

Edited July 6, 2011 by wbaw

[Guest sm4tik]

It's tricky because of the different blade variants, particularly the chinese ones, flashing european bootloaders onto chinese phones makes them not boot because they only have 256mb ram. It's hard to detect reliably exactly which blade variant it's running on & we can't copy the hidden firmware files from the phone itself. So the package would need to contain a few different sets of firmware for every possible type of blade & know which ones to use.

If all blades & their hidden firmware were all exactly the same & compatible, then it'd be fine, the gen1/gen2 stuff makes it much trickier, with the risk of bricking chinese & other blade variants as well, it's not really worth it.

If we can find a way to backup the hidden radio firmware & bootloaders from the phone itself, that'd be the best way, then I'd give it a shot. Problem is it looks like the best way to do that is by hacking one of the first bootloaders which starts everything else on the phone, oemsbl.mbn - one false move with that & the phone is totally dead.

Ok, maybe it's best if I just went for a windows hunt then rather than waiting too long for a gen2 tpt :)