For those of you who attended to the Big Android BBQ 2011, surely you remember the great presentation from XDA Recognized Developers AdamOutler and connexion2005 who showed their high-level hardware mod called UnBrickable Mod, explained JTAG, and gave fascinating presentations on open source development boards. Well, the project has reached another level since the team has successfully implemented this mod on a bricked Galaxy S I9000 and resurrected it!

Be aware that this procedure is delicate, so proceed carefully. And please let us know your experiences.

Originally posted by AdamOutler
The i9000 Development Platform, AKA UnBrickable Mod and Software Based Resurrection

Introduction
Some of you will, remember lets save some bricks? Well, it’s taken a long time to perfect this on the i9000, which is ironic because this is where it started, but we finally have a way! You can perform this mod on a bricked device and resurrect it, or you can apply it as a protective measure.

The way this works is we change the OM value in the processor by modifying an individual electronic binary signal. The signal we are interested in is xOM5. This line is normally grounded, causing the overall OM value to equal 0×9. When we bring this line high, the OM value becomes 0×29. This reverses the booting order and ensures you will always have boot from USB available before the device starts.

This is a better option than JTAG for resurrecting a device. How could it possibly be better then JTAG? Let’s count the ways….
1. The only part required is a wire.
2. No shipping time.
3. No cost for a box to interface the computer.
4. Permanent.
5. Can be done as a preventive measure.
6. Gives the ability to test new Bootloaders temporarily.
7. Allows development of the entire system.
8. Removes worry about flashing and acts as a backup.

Continue to the original thread to find more information.
Adtitional updated information can be found on this external link.

With so many Gingerbread ROMs coming out lately, XDA Recognized Developer sargorn couldn’t wait for the relevant ROM developer to update to the next ROM. So, for the last month of so the XDA developer has been using customised stock ROMs.

One of the first things to do after flashing a new ROM and kernel is to cut down on some of the bloat in /system/.

The dev has put together an utility which more or less removes everything that can be downloaded (for free) from the Market. The utility is a little bit of PHP that will generate a customised CWM3 compatible update.zip which will remove specific apks (and associated .odexes). You can choose which apks you want the update.zip to remove and then hit the Generate button.

For more information and to download the utility, head on over to the forum thread.

As a regular member, one always wishes to have their own ROM a la carte, and now thanks to this great guide by XDA member Perka, this is possible. Based on the work of many devs, the original poster got together all that you need to “easily” cook your own roms. The guide contains 22 steps, which are well explained as well as all the needed tools  for you to try the art of cooking.

Of course, you will need to be sure that you know what you are doing as you will be the only one responsible for the whole process. So, before starting make sure that you read the entire thread and if you have any question, please post before you start. Lastly, you will find a how to video as well.

If you are using this guide, some feedback will be more than welcome.

Originally posted by Perka
[GUIDE]Perka´s Ultimate ROM Cooking Guide

This is how I made my ROM in w7 Ultimate 64bit

Give cred to the real devs!!!

Software needed:
Cygwin http://www.cygwin.com/
dsixda_Android_Kitchen, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=633246
Put the kitchen here: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images…llkitchen.png/
Magic iso http://www.magiciso.com/
7zip or winrar
APK manager http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=695701

Template :
PerkaROM Template at the end of this post.
Stock firmware :
In my case JVP 2.3.4
How to :

Continue to the guide thread to learn more.

As of late, it seems that the engineers among us have begun surfacing as we are seeing an influx of threads regarding very specific topics, particularly in the I9000 section. XDA member UberPinguin shares with us the idea that he had while browsing through some of these threads. Most devices, ever since the Windows Mobile, era will come not only with bootloader and roms on them. There are various levels within the hardware hat can be accessed via specialty pieces of equupments, the likes of which you will likely not encounter in too many places outside of approved cell phone repair shops or electical engineers’ work benches. These extra modes in the hardware will allow you to communicate with parts of the hardware in the logic level and such a thing could have potential impact in things such as brick recovery. Uberpinguin, decided to make a multi purpose UART JIG device, which uses a switch rather than him manually changing resistors and cables around.

This is a very intreresting concept and the dev has been kind enough to show us the parts used as well as the schematic design of his creation. If you know what you are doing and would like to give this a go, please leave some feedback, particularly if you find something intereresting while messing with this.

After reading through some very interesting threads about the UART and JTAG interfaces on the Galaxy S phones, I decided to build my own JIG to trigger the various modes available.
However, I didn’t want to mess with splicing different resistors in, and I don’t like having lots of wires hanging about. So I decided to come up with a way to choose the mode by a switch, rather than switching out different cables or using breadboards.
The resulting design is:

You can find more information in the original thread.

Want something published in the Portal? Contact any News Writer.

Thanks pulser_g2 for the tip!

So, even devices that are deemed unbrickable, like most devices using ODIN can be turned into absolute paperweights (although, if the phones keep getting thinner, they will not be good even for that if bricked). However, there are always ways to recover them or return them to life, although, most of them are expensive because of the hardware required or simply because they need to be shipped back to the factory to have it done there. XDA member js22 had started a thread about a month ago on something rather peculiar that he found while looking at the s5pc110 chip that is in the I9000. As I do not want to try an explain technical information that is more fit for an Electrical Engineer, I will direct you to the thread itself. However, from what I was able to gather, there seems to be native code, in the hardware that basically does not vanish, cannot be accessed by anything else, and that controls very low level components. In other words, salvation may be closer than you think. Also, on page 26 of this thread, XDA member AdamOutler stumbled into something interesting in the form of the I2C Bus looking for an external connection (again more terminology that will be better suited for an Electrical Engineer). According to the dev, at this point only a few values for resistors need to be determined and a feasible solution for bricks may be at hand.

If you feel like giving this a read and you have some tools to contribute to this research effort, please drop by and give your two cents.

OH WOW.. I do believe there is something to this.

I have a brick here which will only give me PBL and this mode.

I’m not really sure what I’m looking at here, but it’s definately something
because of the frequency of “0″ I decided to linebreak after each occurance. I hit a few keys like home, page up, and delete, I did my ABCs and 123s in lower case and then upper. It seems really really random… but I’m sure it’s responding to something it sees me typing.

You can find more information in the original thread.

Want something published in the Portal? Contact any News Writer.

Thanks pulser_g2 for the tip!