Reset BIOS password on an IBM Thinkpad T23

I had really hoped I could reset the supervisor password on a spare IBM T23 laptop we had around the office by - disconnecting the CMOS battery or shorting a jumper. Anything besides the procedure described on sodoityourself.com

But apparently there's no way to "reset it" you just have to build yourself a "testpoint" jig and read the encrypted data directly off the EEPROM connected to the main board.

So I picked up a few parts from RadioShack and went to work. BTW, The password turned out to be XPBIOS.


But, I feel it's important to note, I'm an idiot.

The image you see above here is NOT of a working cable. It is in-fact the improperly constructed cable which was later rebuilt and used to successfully dump the contents of the actmel eeprom on the IBM Thinkpad.

Apparently there isn't much standardization to diagramming a serial connector. It's hard to tell if the flat picture you're looking at is supposed to be a male or female connection. And even worse - true circuit diagrams will often show the BACK of the connector - i.e. they draw it so you would be looking at where the "wires" are ACTUALLY connecting to the BACK of the connector.

Crazy.

Your only real hope is to know the pin numbers of an rs232 cable. Thankfully, almost ALL diagrams will include pin numbers to specify the orientation of the connector and avoid this type of confusion.

Well... that doesn't help you much if you don't know which pin is which on your cable. So here is a picture of an rs232 / db9 / 9-pin serial cable - with both male and female connectors labeled pin 1, pin 5, pin 6, and pin 9.


Not even wiki has this kind of information...

Nokia 770 OS2007HE - Can't change Regional settings

Flashed my Nokia tablet with the new '07 OS "Hacker Edition" - it's been running strong all night.

The first issue I came into was a problem changing the Regional settings and Device language from English (United Kingdom) to English (USA). I would get an error:

Device storage memory full.
Delete some data to free memory.

Total rubbish, the memory was fine. Not surprisingly all this little drop down does is change a setting in a config file. Install xTerm, gainroot, find the file, edit the setting, reboot and now my date displays month/day/year - no problem.

**UPDATE** Ivie found an even simpler solution documented on her blog - you may want to try that first.

I found an updated version of xTerm that draws the screen quite a bit better, and supports color. To install xTerm on a Nokia 770 0S2007HE go to maemo-hackers and click on the .install link for "bora"

To gain root access on a Nokia 770 OS2007HE use the same old 2006 "becomeroot" package - download it here.

Then just open up xTerm, su gainroot and edit the following file:

/etc/osso-af-init/locale

change the last two lines to:

export LANG=en_US
export LC_MESSAGES=en_US

that is... as long as you live here in the states.

I'll probably have more updates as I run into more snags installing and reconfiguring all my packages. To-Do list updated.

Configure Nokia 770 Internet Search Applet

Configure Nokia 770 Internet Search Applet
Originally uploaded by clay.gerrard@sbcglobal.net

Add additional search engines to your Nokia 770 Internet Search Applet by creating carefully crafted .xml documents in /usr/share/mis. You can even make custom icons!

To add IMDB, Amazon, eBay, NewEgg & Google Maps (for Nokia 770) download internetsearch.zip from my media fire account, and add the extracted files to /usr/share/mis

Extract the files into a folder on your Nokia 770's memory card (something like internetsearch). Then you'll need to fire up xTerm and becomeroot. Copy the files to /usr/share/mis using a command similar to this:

cp /media/mmc1/internetsearch/* /usr/share/mis/

Reboot for changes to take effect.

I've added my favorite search engines. I particularly like the Google Maps for Nokia 770 - the trick to using this effectively is to "zoom in" to 150% using the buttons on top. Then instead of "dragging" around the map - you click where you want to re-center.

This is an update and repackage of work started by Moonshine.

For more details about the format of these .xml files reference this post on internet tablet talk.

c0072746 - Can not expand Public Folders in Exchange 2003

FINALLY!!! This has been bugging me for AGES!!!

There is TONS of errors that may crop up when you try to expand public folders in the Exchange System Manager (ESM). But I couldn't find much about MY error: c0072746

Exchange System Manager
An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

Facility: Win32
ID no: c0072746
Exchange System Manager
[OK]

I'm not really worried about the "error" - the public folders work FINE inside Outlook and OWA. My real concern was that I couldn't administrate the public folders through ESM - setting permissions and the like.

FINALLY I found a tool that will let me administrate them with out using ESM - PFDAVAdmin

Download it here
Run the .exe to extract the contents to a folder called PFDAVAdmin
Double click PFDAVAdmin.exe to start the GUI

From here you can change permissions on all your public folders, and correct problems such as no owner being defined. Once I fixed all the permissions errors, ESM was again able to administer the public folders - PRAISE JESUS!

My Wordpress Site

www.cciwholesale.com

Yup, so that's word press. I made more than a few minor re-writes to some of the default theme and widget pages. Enough changes that I feel justified in putting PHP experience on my resume.

The inital installation was super easy, that famous "five minute install" was really amazing to experience. CrystalTech even had a tutorial. They could have put this part closer to the top though:

You may need to add the “index.php” file as a default start page for your site configuration. This can be achieved within the WebControlCenter within the IIS -> Default Pages menu.

The only thing I feel I'm missing on a WIMP vs LAMP configuration is the URL re-write feature.

http://www.cciwholesale.com/cci/about

would have been a lot better than:

http://www.cciwholesale.com/cci/?page_id=2

But apparently there's no good way for a web hosting company that runs an IIS server to give their users a good way to implement this feature. If I'm wrong on that - I'd love to be corrected.

I got a new job working for RackSpace - they're a managed services hosting company, and the largest tech employer in San Antonio. I am actually pretty excited - I won't start until after the holidays. I'm going to be working with the managed services group, mainly setting up back-up policies on all their client's various hosted systems, filling restore requests, and generally troubleshooting any problems that come up. It's all good.

So now you're an expert with wordpress

A new project - just what the blog needs to get back on track. It's been a while. I welcome back my fictional readers.

If you need to build a brochure site for your business (and let's be honest, if you don't already have one - you and me BOTH have put it off too long) - Wordpress may be for you.

I assume two things.
1) You have basically zero experience with PHP and mySQL
2) You're tired of waiting on an extra hundred hours of spare free time to come along

Technically I also assume you have a hosting company that you pay to store things on the web for you - which you currently only access via FTP. If they are fairly decent - you probably also have tons of other functionality provided on your account at no extra charge that you aren't taking advantage of. Because... we'll I do.

My businesses use CrystalTech (where's the free month?) which is a very powerful WIMP.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have something useful to say about the whole procedure of getting a WordPress site up and running, that I can post. Hopefully, someone will get some benefit from it. According to my stats - gain root and Verizon Nokia 770 have been a real "hit."

If you guys are worried about my Nokia, it's ok, she's doing fine. They're even starting to go back up on eBay. To-do list updated. For a few weeks I was sporting a laptop (which I ended up having to deploy) so the Nokia wasn't getting much attention. I need to do that Nokia 770 Memory upgrade.

Hacking the Verizon "red" UI on the KRZR turned out to be a chore. I just wanted to make it green... The ringer even stopped working after a weekend at ACL. It's cool - it just needed to be cleaned & re-seated.

Unlimited Wireless Internet Anywhere - Nokia 770 & Verizon EVDO DUN - $15/mo

Big NEWS.
This weekend - I got a new phone.
A white Verizon K1m:
First I had to add unlimited Mobile Web to my account for $15 extra a month, and then I had to enable DUN (tutorial) - but it was totally worth it:

(Update: 938352 was THE thread for this hack, do a search for the thread number in hofo EVERYONE referenced it, but for some reason it's gone now. Try this one)


Granted that test was performed standing still in the middle of an empty parking lot. But I'm getting 200 kbps pretty consistant, with bursts in the 300's and dips to the mid-100's. More than enough to listen to web radio or check my email - if not at the same time.

Wireless Internet Anywhere - it's like I'm in the future... or Japan.

Lot's of updating on the to-do list - plus I want to make a few posts about some of my mods to the KRZR and my experiences with the Verizon red UI. More to come soon!

Is there a microphone on the Nokia 770?

I always kinda wondered since I picked one up. And having installed an audio recorder, I can now say with out a doubt - that the Nokia 770 does indeed have a built in mic.

You can record your own voice notes by installing maemo-reocrder.

To-do list - updated.

mame emulator on nokia 770

mame emulator on nokia 770
Originally uploaded by clay.gerrard@sbcglobal.net

xmaeme is really impressive - but not that playable. There seems to be a hardware limitation that prevents the emulator engine from recognizing more than one button press at a time. And with all the hardware keys to the left of the display, people are generally forced to rotate the device 90deg, so the buttons are on the bottom. This way you can put both hands on the keys and still see. The image on the display can be rotated clockwise to compensate and make the game appear right side up - however I found some roms would not load with this option enabled.

From the xMaeme loader gui - when I checked "rotate clockwise" - many games would fail to load with the error message - "unable to load ROM"

Perhaps a role playing type game on the Nintendo emulator will be more fun.

Nevertheless, here's the project homepage: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/xmame/

Adding users and Shadow Password

So the Nokia 770 does have the "adduser" script. I tried:

adduser clayg

Everything looked like a normal debian adduser script, full name, room number etc. But it didn't work quite right.

When I tried to log-in with my new user from putty it booted me right back out. So I tried switching users from the console.

su clayg

It told me stright away /bin/bash doesn't exist. Hince the whole "busybox" thing every time I log-in. I'm not running the bourne-again shell!

I headed to /etc/passwd to investigate and guess what - the password file on the Nokia 770 is NOT SHADOWED.

To create the /etc/shadow file and remove the encrypted passwords from the world readable file /etc/passwd issue the command:

pwconv

This command will create the file /etc/shadow (which is only readable by root) and use that to store all the user's encrypted passwords.

Now, if you look at the last line in /etc/passwd you should see something like this:

clayg:x:1000:1000:Clay Gerrard,,,:/home/clayg:/bin/bash

It's the last bit that's causing problems. The last field is the shell to invoke when the user logs in, and if you check under /bin - bash really isn't there...

I referenced the entries for root and user as an example, and changed the last field from /bin/bash to /bin/sh

I guess I could have just installed bash...

Weather Applet & Video Converter

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/omweather/

If you planning on watching video's on your Nokia 770 you're going to want this little java application to convert your standard mpg's and avi's to Nokia 770 compatible resolution and framerate:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=26

SSH on Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

So my apartment complex has free wifi out by the pool. Pretty nice. Got the password from the lady at the front desk and logged right in.

Now that I can becomeroot, I'm able to start doing some REAL work on this thing. Like install a SSH Client & Server. I've never heard of the project before, but I ended up installing the dropbear.

First you should add the maemo-hackers repository to your application manager:

1. Open the Application Manager
   
2. Click on the Application Manager Titlebar
3. Select Tools->Application Catalogue
4. Click NEW to add the maemo-hackers.org repository

The catalogue entry for the maemo-hackers.org repository should have the following settings:

Web Address: http://maemo-hackers.org/apt
Distribution: mistral
Components: main

Leave "Enabled" checked. After you hit ok a few times it should prompt to refresh list of packages. Do this and when you look at "all packages" you'll see quite a few more than you had before. Go ahead and choose to install dropbear-client.

Well isn't that fun - now you can use ssh to log-in to your favorite linux box... but the real trick is getting that ssh server running isn't it? Well, that's a little harder because you have to have root privileges to install the dropbear-server - but we HAVE root privilege


INSTALL SSH SERVER ON NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET OS 2006

Close out of the application manager. Start up xterm. Gain root access.

enter the following command in xterm to install the dropbear-server

apt-get install dropbear-server

NOTE: you must have the maemo-hackers.org repository already added into your application catalog

Now run ifconfig to check your ip, open putty or some other ssh client on another machine somewhere - and dig the log-in:



I also found this cool themeing app, it's java so you can run it just about anywhere. You can reskin your Nokia by editing just one jpg and using the java app to compile the .deb - then if you don't like it, you just uninstall it!

to-do list: updated

BTW, the default root password is rootme, and that ssh server is always on. You may want to change that root password like - right away...

Gain Root Access to Nokia 770

First you'll want to download the "becomeroot" package. I found a copy on the Polish Eko1 repository.

After you nab a copy of becomeroot_0.1-2_armel.deb, you can install it by using the "install from file" option in the application manager.

Then you can open up xTerm. You did install xTerm right?


The command "sudo gainroot" will open a root shell.

shot-2007-05-08-10-12-10

shot-2007-05-08-10-12-10
Originally uploaded by clay.gerrard@sbcglobal.net

got xTerm up and running, it's definitely a debian based linux. The media card is mounted at /media/mmc1

Nokia 770 CPU info & Disk Info

cat /proc/cpuinfo

Processor : ARM926EJ-Sid(wb) rev 3 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 125.76
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp java
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 5TEJ
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0x926
CPU revision : 3
Cache type : write-back
Cache clean : cp15 c7 ops
Cache lockdown : format C
Cache format : Harvard
I size : 32768
I assoc : 4
I line length : 32
I sets : 256
D size : 16384
D assoc : 4
D line length : 32
D sets : 128

Hardware : Nokia 770
Revision : 17100016
Serial : 033302008b5f702f

df -h

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on

• /dev/mtdblock4 2.0M 2.0M 0 100% /mnt/initfs
• none 512.0k 64.0k 448.0k 13% /mnt/initfs/tmp
• /dev/mtdblock4 123.5M 62.3M 61.2M 50% /
• none 512.0k 64.0k 448.0k 13% /tmp
• none 1.0M 44.0k 980.0k 4% /dev

todo list - updated

shot-2007-05-08-00-29-31

shot-2007-05-08-00-29-31
Originally uploaded by clay.gerrard@sbcglobal.net

I uploaded this to flickr from Bilbo, that's what i'm calling it... Bilbo.

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet back in hand!

Finally, after a week of waiting - I just got stock in today.

Naturally, I've updated the to-do list: http://thoughtsbyclayg.blogspot.com/2007/06/goals.html

Worth noting the screen shot app mh-shot-tool and this slightly cool screenshot.

Unclose last tab in Firefox , edubuntu and "stuff"

the keyboard shortcut ctrl-shift-t will "undo" the last tab close in FireFox 2.0 - oops!

You wouldn't know this about me. But I am a keyboard shortcut junky.

thanks home dood...
http://grahams.livejournal.com/635284.html

So, I'm rebuilding my sisters horribly virus infected PC this weekend. It's already a decent machine, 2Ghz Intel, 512MB RAM, 60GB IDE HD, DVD-RW. I'm going to back up all her data onto a seperate HD with a 40GB "stuff" partition. And install a dual boot windows XP and edubuntu on the other half.

I wish Windows users would just INSIST on separate system and storage partitions on their personal computers. Windows is too unstable, and it's to much work to back-up and restore their data (7GB of pictures, music and office documents on my sisters home computer). For me, I just put in a second hard-drive, copied the "usual places" over and ran a few searches for misc jpg's and m4p's and the like... but most folks simply can not recover their data if it's on a system partition that has been deeply compromised by a Trojan. Unless they have a "stuff" partition.

Hello, Nikki

Tell everyone what it is you do...
http://www.gadgetell.com/wp-print.php?p=3788

Much like the reviewer, I was reluctant to let her go - but I had to sell her. Nikki I barely knew thee. =(

One thing I learned from the sale, you can easily erase all of your stored web passwords on your Nokia 770 by booting up xterm (http://770.fs-security.com/xterm/) and removing the hidden directory .opera in your home folder.

cd ~
rm -R .opera

Yeah it turns out the browser on this thing is good ol opera. I wonder if firefox has been ported. A PDA that I can tweak like a linux box - just heavenly.

But it's all good cause I got 8 more on the way.

Nokia 770 To-Do List

So I'm going to set some goals for myself. Here's a list of things I would very much like to do to/on/with my Nokia 770. My first Internet Tablet I had named Nikki, like Nokia - but with the hottness. But I had to sell that little girl. So now I have Bilbo, the baddass. I'll update this post as I complete items on the list, and as much as possible link to tutorials of other's or my own.

Things to do to/on/with my Nokia 770

• install screen capture tool (.install, proof) - 7/6
• Connect to a couple wifi spots, learn the connection manager - 6/28
• use it in a real life coffee shop, enjoy the attention - done, and at the movie/music store and many restaurants
• Install DOOM and complete first level – incomplete
• *(installed on 6/28, still trying to get used to touch screen controls)
• Install xTerm and dig around the base linux file structure (screenshot)- 6/28
• post "cat /proc/cpuinfo" on the blog - complete 7/6
• Find a mellow organic green theme, barring that, build one (bg, theme)- 7/6
• Install a SSH Server, use putty to login - 7/7 (tutorial)
• scp file from linux box to Nokia - DONE
• login as root - (howto)7/7
• create new user - 7/9 complete
• Install a VNC Server, use tightVNC to control device from PC - incomplete
• connect it to some manner of bluetooth something - 7/27, connected to k1m
• setup Email Client (gmail, http://tinyurl.com/28ddoe) - 6/28
• copy some mp3's from my PC via usb cable - 6/28
• transfer files to Nokia from my PC over bluetooth - complete 7/30
• Install 1GB+ internal memory upgrade in this thing (may require kernel upgrade) - incomplete
• get a bluetooth keyboard hooked up with this rig - incomplete
• flash with latest firmware to restore to factory default - 12/19/07 (OS2007HE)
• install decent weather applet - 7/9, link
• install decent calender app - incomplete
• chat with my friends on their aim & yahoo accounts (gaim or googleTalk?) - incomplete
• Record some sound of some such via some manor of mic of sorts - 7/16 complete
• make an internet call - incomplete
• establish a vpn tunnel to at least one of the offices - incomplete
• install netcat - scan a few ports on some random unsecured hotspot - incomplete
• install UKTUBE, laugh at the people who just spent $500 on their iPhone – incomplete
• install some sort of emulator, MAME or NES or Gameboy - complete 7/14
  
• make post to this very blog, from my Nokia 770 - incomplete
  

Hacking the Nokia 770

I found a few of these bad boys for sale on the interwebz.
















I have some listed on ebay.
Another I'm going to play around with for a few days... I'll let you know how it goes.