My Tech Adventures

Hello Again! Some pictures of the BT Home Hub (version 1): And some pictures of BT Home Hub v1.5: And they also come in Black!!! The Home Hub v1 and Home Hub v1.5 are adsl wireless routers that were provided by UK ISP BT to their customers made by Thomson/Inventel (aka Technicolor/Alcatel) quite some time ago. The specifications are listed here  under the Hardware section. You can still find them 'dumped' here in Pakistan ... some packaged nicely in their boxes as shown above ... and more importantly, mostly in good working condition. I remember getting them both several years ago (when I didn't know anything about unlocking) and the disappointment when I realized that they were locked to BT*.  At that time, these were the most featured devices available here locally not to mention great looking as well. Sadly, had to be stored away. Unlike me however, other people didn't give up and when PsiDOC came along, a whole co...

Updated: Turns out Zong is no better with "missing" balance issues! Back to Telenor who now have 4G as well (dealing with the original issue with Telenor by using the Spam Filter)! Hello! A couple of days ago, I received a call from Zong's customer support number 310 asking for my home address to deliver their 4G LTE SIM free of cost as I am a valuable customer (according) to them. I had ported over to Zong from Telenor few months ago (due to Telenor's failure to stop in an agreeable manner, despite my repeated requests and help from the regulator PTA, their barrage of promotional messages and illegal promotional robo-calls) but hadn't selected the 4G capable SIM. So, I was quite happy to accept this offer and to my surprise, it was delivered the very next day as promised via TCS at no cost. Here are some pictures (with my details blanked out of course): Selected Micro-SIM as per my mobile phone! With my 'old' SIM in the phone, I ha...

This ( click here for some device info) was quite a popular router for ISPs and comes in many variants as used in different parts of the world! It also became popular with users once many tweaks and utilities became available for it including the DMT tool that provides advanced monitoring and configuration. Once the CLI is accessible with required credentials, many more options become available including bridge mode, wireless router only mode using one of the lan ports as a wan port, multi-pvc support and much more. It has a good modem supporting upto adsl2+ and still relevant for Pakistan! However, some of the ISPs preferred to have it locked down for various reasons and one may not find a 'generic' model easily! There is the option of using jtag to 'convert' the locked version into the generic one by flashing a modified cfe, but, there is also a much easier software based method provided you don't mind running older firmware and don't mind...

Hi! Next up is another router provided by the ISP Sky (UK) having the model number 2504n (not to be confused with the 2504)! It is from Sagem (Sagemcom) and as with the 2504, it can be 'unlocked' thanks to a custom firmware image for use with other ISPs. As a side note, there was also a 2304n provided by Sky but it doesn't seem to have any unlocked firmware available (can be used as a simple WAP by disabling DHCP and firewall). Some images from around the web: And here are some I took of the one I 'salvaged': As per specs, this router uses the BCM6362  chipset where the bcm6362 is quite an advanced chipset making an unlock quite alluring! The only downside seems to be the single band wireless n (upto 144Mbps) but that is good enough for use with the 'internet' side of things! Coming to the unlock:  (To continue reading, please click on 'Read More')

Hello Again!  (Comes with a stand as well but I couldn't find mine) Let's have a look inside this one: This router was used by the ISP Sky in UK, but, can be found 'dumped' here in Pakistan as well! Now, most ISPs in the UK prefer to lock down the router as it is supposed to create less problems for support and also to protect the investment as routers are 'rented' out! So, it might seem a bad idea to pick up a locked router at first, but, thanks to some smart people who invest their time and money to figure out a way to 'unlock' and/or improve the performance of such locked routers there is some hope left for these routers! As far as the Sky 2504 (not to be confused with the 2504n) router is concerned, there is not one but at least two ways to unlock the router for use with other ISPs (not counting openwrt)! The first method is based around the fact  (To continue reading, please click on 'Read Mo...

Hello! (Mine is not in its best shape, so I have used these three exterior promotional images from d-link) This is quite an old router but still quite useful here ... there is loads of info on it on the web! It is based upon the AR7 chipset by Texas Instruments ( for details ) and can use custom and/or modified firmware images for such routers while being fairly robust (until the bootloader is intact)! There are also many tools for it! The one I have is the UK A1 revision that is amongst the initial offerings (later revisions officially support ADSL2+) and officially supports adsl (upto 8Mbps) connections. Let's have a look inside:   From the last image, it is clear that same design is used for different models ... in fact one can use firmware for newer models on this older model though it is not confirmed that adsl2+ works or not when you do ... some people suggest that this A1 revision has h/w limitation(s) ... not much of a problem as I hav...