Wasn't sure where to put this, there's other threads with mention of this elsewhere so Admin please move if you feel it appropiate.


OK folks, this is mainly for folks, like me, who want to flash or play around with the firmware on their phones, but don't have a serial port on their laptops. A few weeks back, I purchased a cable from Ipmart (link below) that has usb ends, one standard 2.0 and the other a mini for our phones (China 23). This cable has serial emulator chip in the middle of it so that you can open a com port to flash your phone. I have 2 P168+ phones with different build dates and sw versions and have successfully downloaded the firmware from each of them. I have also been able to flash a firmware from a "C" model onto my play-around phone and back again. The "C" fw booted up just fine and had all differences intact. The only thing is the phone would not recognize either my AT&T or T-Mobile sim. I've read that this is also a problem when "upgrading" with a standard serial cable. Anyone with a possible fix to this, please post up, but it's not a major concern as I've simply been testing the cable. The original fw flashed back on the phone and it works as it did before. The back-up fw download took around 50 minutes and the upload just over 30. Besides my original fw, I have a bunch of others that I've downloaded and plan to try in the next week or so. I'm not a "hacker", but maybe this info can help someone else. The cable and driver links are below. Feedback appreciated and good luck.

http://rapidshare.com/files/156474425/MSG_dec16_20081017174459_USB_Driver.zip


http://www.ipmart.com/main/product/China23,GSTARGM328,,Samsung,D900,,12Pin_2X6,USB,Unlocking,Cable,Compatible,27110.php?prod=27110

Thanks for the info. So the USB power source is powerful enough to power the flash withou a 9 volt battery?

______________ Mike

Yes, it works just fine. I have only had it to work with flashtools v4.1 however. I've tried using spiderman about a dozen times after I finally got it to recognize my specific com port. It would start the process, but only get to 2% and close the com port.

Nice post Smurfman

I believe I will buy one now that you provided the great info!

on a side note, what OS are you using? XP or Vista? I really don't think it will matter but... it might with the com port situation.

I've got an XP machine w/ a 2GHz processor. The download seemed slow to me, but the upload was as mentioned in Testing's U-tube video. By the way, I was just able to get Spiderman v2.46 to upload "P168C latest version" and it booted up fine, just the same problem with not recognizing the sim cards. Still haven't got spiderman to download a back-up file, but I think it's a user error, not the program.

Wow, I totaly missed this thread when i was asking about the serial to usb converter. But anyway, i got a Second Serial cable comming from zydaglo.com & a $5.88 serial to usb (cell pda...etc...Vista compatible) shipped from ebay. but when my other cable worked. it was with Spiderman. Flash tools did nothing. Must have been the cable LOL. I still may order one.

just received my cable Via Ip-mart/UPS took 4 days. not bad considering the long haul from china.

the USB-USB /serial chip. Have the drivers / (thanks ksmurf) I will try and post my firmware ASAP. from my P168C. (as a note) I believe my version of the "c" is the better quality build when i purchased it, due to the Taiwan TAG, along with a stable firmware. never had any issues whats so ever. after doing research for so long now and comparing quality. i lucked out.

ok what you need to do to get them reading back fine I found was.

lower the baud rate a little for readback and usb serail cables ar efine with spiderman etc

PS
this is from what i found on other phones and not tested on p168.

I believe I might have to lower the baud. was using the 115200.
it froze.

here is the error i got



Will update later

got it to work
I used the 57600 baud rate

it took about 62 minutes........

Wow! So the usb cable is SLOWER than the serial one. I didn't expect that.

there could be some variables that come along with my experience.

I have Vista on my laptop. (could be an issue or not) the drivers that ksmurf provided worked great and Vista kept harassing me "are you sure you want to load this unsigned drivers"? I ignored it and loaded and found the cable and serial chip perfect.

The Readback on the 115200 baud kept freezing at the halfway mark for some reason. so like i mentioned in my other post i dropped it down one notch and was good.

I used the 115200 baud to Flash the phone and was done in 30 minutes.

all in all this cable is very good and i highly recommend it! for those who do not have the serial port

Hey TD, I noticed when I do readbacks, it was slow too. Did you ever try to set up the log and see what was happening. I noticed that for some reason it seemed to work more times than not when I set up a log. ???? No clue why this would be though.

does anyone know if the usb - usb flash cable is available stateside yet?

some usb flash cables are only stable at 57k. So if 115k is no good drop them back.

But nearly all can flash at 460k .