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Help! Have I broken my MC801A?

Since I now have a spare MC801A on the way from Sotel my Huawei B818-263 will shortly be up for grabs. It's unlocked and has global firmware. I've been using it on Three. Anyone interested?
 
There is an alternative method for cell locking via the secret debug menu. Since this is semi-legitimate in that the menu actually exists in the firmware I think perhaps this may be a safer way of locking to a cell rather than using the Java script. When entering valid new parameters it responds with "success", which gives you some hope that a reboot to activate them will be ok.
 
The Javascript just replicates that menu (I've created a Python library to do it as well). When you cell lock with the JS you will see the "success" message in the console as well.
 
The Javascript just replicates that menu (I've created a Python library to do it as well). When you cell lock with the JS you will see the "success" message in the console as well.
Oh well, I'll just have to try to be extra careful. Thanks for the comment.
 
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There's an interesting difference to the restored firmware compared to the original. Network selection offers:
Automatic
5G NSA Only
5G SA Only *
4G/3G *
4G Only
3G Only *

* these options are in addition to the original Sotel/T-Mobile firmware.
 
The guy who flashed it said it was German T-Mobile from Sotel, not in the public domain. The only other difference that I could find was the wi-fi output strength parameters where there were three options, short, medium, long. The original just had short and long options. Do you know of any other identifying differences?
 
Did he leave a copy of that firmware on your PC?

No he deleted it. When I asked for a copy he refused saying that it's not in the public domain. To be honest I was ok with that as I was grateful for the effort he put in to recover the router. He's a clever guy.

There was one little minor problem with the router password which was set to "admin", But the change password page required entry of the current password to be at least six digits because in the original firmware it would have been a long string of digits.
I didn't have a clue how to fix it but after mentioning it he came back within half an hour with a screenshot of the page with the brower debug on, and highlighting two limit numbers in the HTML code that I needed to override to allow the admin pw to be accepted. It's something I'd have to do after any future factory reset so I saved it for future reference.
 
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@eccles can you access FTP on port 4000?
You're probably on the mod firmware, if you ping google.com you may see a TTL of 64.

The mod firmware is @USER@555 own work and it's not available for free as they've done considerable time consuming work on it.
 
I don't have an FTP client installed and I'm not familiar with the basic Windows commands. In any case I'm a bit reluctant to mess with FTP with the box through the USB connection.
When installing the firmware via USB cable port 9008 was used.

A ping to Googe.com from the router network tools returns a ttl of 114.

It's understandable why they don't want to give the firmware away. I wouldn't mind guessing that it'll leak out eventually though.
 
Last edited:
@eccles can you access FTP on port 4000?
You're probably on the mod firmware, if you ping google.com you may see a TTL of 64.

.
not in this firmware TTL 64. MC801AV1.0.0B09 this firmware was built partly from a dump partially taken from other firmware as many lose QCN with original data. To enter the web interface it was decided to make the password admin but there was a problem with the number of password characters to login
 
As an addendum to this thread, I now understand why the box was originally bricked. The cell lock error was a red herring; what almost certainly happened was that the box was ready to initiate a firmware update. I did a factory reset to remove the cell-lock but was unaware that a factory reset would actually begin updating. So when the box froze it was actually updating. Not knowing this I did another reset with the reset pin, thus bricking the box. Had I waited and not done that second reset, the update would have completed and the box restored.

Therefore, cell locking is safe but be sure there is no update pending when clearing it with a hard reset.

The second box that I purchased updated soon after this to B16 and it completed successfully. You can recognise an update occurring if the LEDs flash, cycling in turn. Don't touch the box if it does this, just let it do its thing. It takes about ten minutes.
 
S
As an addendum to this thread, I now understand why the box was originally bricked. The cell lock error was a red herring; what almost certainly happened was that the box was ready to initiate a firmware update. I did a factory reset to remove the cell-lock but was unaware that a factory reset would actually begin updating. So when the box froze it was actually updating. Not knowing this I did another reset with the reset pin, thus bricking the box. Had I waited and not done that second reset, the update would have completed and the box restored.

Therefore, cell locking is safe but be sure there is no update pending when clearing it with a hard reset.

The second box that I purchased updated soon after this to B16 and it completed successfully. You can recognise an update occurring if the LEDs flash, cycling in turn. Don't touch the box if it does this, just let it do its thing. It takes about ten minutes.
Same thing has happened to me. For the time being my device is bricked.
I 'm trying to reach @USER@555 .
Hopefully he 'll respond.
 
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S

Same thing has happened to me. For the time being my device is bricked.
I 'm trying to reach @USER@555 .
Hopefully he 'll respond.
Relying on a private individual to fix my production consumer router would not be my idea of fun.

I hope the fixed router will not be used for anything important in the future, such as for one's job.
 
Relying on a private individual to fix my production consumer router would not be my idea of fun.

I hope the fixed router will not be used for anything important in the future, such as for one's job.
I m totally ok with that.
Pretty much everything is going to be functional.
The alternative is to get a new one. And all that for a damn cell lock
 
From the latest information, it feels like the root cause of the problem was that the devices were configured to automatically update their firmware when the owner was unaware of this configuration.

To defensively protect against this when using cell locking, it's probably worth owners looking to disable this broken behaviour (judged broken by multiple people bricking their device by presumably behaving reasonably and not recklessly).

Another good step is to reboot a router before performing any changes so that breakage can be isolated to subsequent changes and not as a result of pre-existing problems that could confuse the debugging. It would be hoped in this case, a reboot would trigger a firmware update which the owner would leave to complete.

Personally, I like to configure all my network devices for manual updates so I can babysit the process through the few minutes when bricking is likely to occur. If a network device cannot have auto-update disabled, I would judge that to be a problem.
 
Automatic update was turned off on my device and simply rebooting the router didn't cause it to update. It was the action of a factory reset, which is necessary to wipe a cell lock, which caused it to update without prompting. I presume the reason for this is that a new device would update to the current level when first turned on, a "feature" which in itself is asking for problems.
The restored device now has updates turned off within the firmware so the situation is unlikely to reoccur.

My second router which has stock T-Mobile firmware is also locked to a specific cell. On that device if I do wish to remove the lock I do a manual update check first just to make sure there is no update waiting.
 
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