2154-0500 big inhibition :/ after a little engagement of these phones 2155 so i have a 3rd phone here that is more normal, and the flashing tools actually connected to it (i accidentally engaged it when trying to do other thing i think) but it kept stalling when imaging it for some reason, new unboxed, both sp flash tools then i ran sp flash tool in cli mode to engage it more clearly uhh and it turns out it defaults to reflashing the whole phone when run, so it did that, and i only have the first 80 mb or so of the factory image as a result but at least it works i'm imaging it in its newly flashed state to have a copy, and spending time looking at the german phone the german phone appears to use a different private key for the download agent that none of these tools have heard of it also has these changes when plugged in to mtkclient: Preloader - Target config: 0x5 Preloader - SBC enabled: True Preloader - SLA enabled: False Preloader - DAA enabled: True Preloader - SWJTAG enabled: True these fields are all false for the usa phone i don't know what swjtag is but it sure sounds exciting and i imagine with a mediatek manual i could likely use it to engage the chip directly in some way, maybe not dunno don't know what daa or sbc is either 2241-0500 2241 2257 ok i found instructions on using the bypass utility ( https://github.com/MTK-bypass/bypass_utility ) at https://www.hovatek.com/forum/thread-37957.html . it turns out that SLA and DAA are basically secure boot. so this new-in-box phone i have has them disabled, maybe because mtkclient disabled them specifically when i ran it. reading the readme it looks like it needs a kernel patch on linux that it doesn't need on windows, i think i ran into this issue in the past, rebuilding my kernel on linux. maybe i'll try windows first unsure. 0012-0500 so the new phone seems to work fine aside from the weird failures mid-imaging the german phone appears to require a DA i don't have, so accessing it would require disabling secure boot i guess; i'm presently mentally confusing this with dm_verity, sadly. [... 0044 well i got my system re-attached to its package repositories but had to change what kind of system it was so things are a little confused but and i'm building an srpm for the kernel with the mtk tool patch (kamakiri.patch). i'm not sure if it's relevent but it seems like it makes sense and opens options; i vaguely recall the code it patches was implemented by the vendor in such a way that the use of the com port is limited unneccessarily and the patch undoes this limit somehow, unsure this build will take a long time :S maybe i can start flashing the 3rd phone to use as a phone ... - the german phone needs unknown signed DA or a brom exploit - the 1st phone that didn't show a com port, i haven't looked at it - somebody posted questions regarding unlocking this phone to the hovatek forums (they referenced my post on xda when i first got it working!) i'm not sure if it's relevant here or not i'll check their question maybe ... 0108