Easiest firmware flashing EVER

[TomFrost]

To answer my own question, if anyone is interested, the processor in the iPhone is (ready for this?) an ARM! I guess it makes sense, but certainly not what I was expecting from a device that multitasks this well. Looking at the other hardware in this sucker, though, it becomes obvious why it works -- there's very little threading actually going on, because there's separate chips for the processing of calls and audio, and it looks as though Apple's ARM is just using interrupts to interface with them. Quantity of chips instead of quality of chips appears to be working fairly well for Apple ;-).

I'm understanding a bit more, now, why this wasn't initially opened up to third party developers, and why it can't handle Adobe Flash. What a maze! I'm not even sure that this can be threaded to the point that Flash would require.

[Kyle Matthews]

Did you find where the firmware was located on the computer?

[TomFrost]

Not yet. I assumed it would be in the iTunes.app folder, but there's nothing in the resources for it. My closest guess so far is that it's been lumped together with the iPod framework, though that seems a bit odd. Still poking around.

I really don't want to unnecessarily flash my phone, but I'm worried that it downloads the iPhone software from apple when you hit the button, and caches it as it writes. If that's the case.. this won't be near as easy as I expected.

[Cody Overcash]

well jedi knows obviously

[TomFrost]

Got it. It's not on your computer -- only topical update location files are there. You can download the full firmware at

http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite....a_Restore.ipsw

Just rename that to .zip and extract. Might need to use curl or wget depending on what browser you're running!

[Kyle Matthews]

Yup but Jedi apparently isn't sharing.

Nice.

[TomFrost]

Hey hey hey, they're getting tricksy!

I poke around, and-- what? There's another private framework here! Apple Mobile Device.. hmm, could it be?

Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks tom$ cd MobileDevice.framework/
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework tom$ ls
MobileDevice    Resources       Versions
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework tom$ cd Resources/Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Resources tom$ ls
AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app     reenumerate
AppleMobileSync.app             usbmuxd
English.lproj                   version.plist
Info.plist
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Resources tom$ cd ../Versions 
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions tom$ ls
A       Current
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions tom$ cd Current/
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/Current tom$ ls
MobileDevice    Resources
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/Current tom$ cd ../../Resources/AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app/Contents/
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Resources/AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app/Contents tom$ ls
Info.plist      MacOS           PkgInfo         Resources       version.plist
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Resources/AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app/Contents tom$ cd Resources/
Bean:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Resources/AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app/Contents/Resources tom$ ls
AppleMobileBackup               MDCrashReportTool
ClientDescription.plist         iPodSyncClientImages.icns

AppleMobileBackup! So this hidden little MobileDeviceHelper app holds the hardware calls for talking to the iPhone. My Linux box is getting a USB dumper as soon as I get a shower.

[JedixJarf]

sorry guys I'm posting from my iPhone right now, I will have to report back to you guys when I get home in about 5 or 6 hours.

[fdot]

just wanted to thank you guys before hand...u helped me with my razr... never got to thank anyone

btw.... check outlink

they said they got the ramdisk mounted and its an osx filesystem