I'm going to pose a question that I've wondered about for a long time. I'm not a programmer, engineer, or developer, and It's been a long time since my days of playing around with motorola software and especially the whole software alteration / editing game. (Let me point out before anyone gets in a ruffle, I'm not advocating that anyone do anything illegal. I've already been there and been accused of that - I know about RSS, CPS, L*bt**ls, S***eyG*ns, and all that, but that isn't what I'm referring to. I'm just seeing if the ones on here that know the 'software' and hardware inside and out think this may be theoretically possible.) If someone has a M radio that is their property, and they have the right to do with it as they please such as talk (and listen) on their licensed or authorized frequencies / channels etc. (ie amateur radio), or they can use it as a fancy paperweight, or just wear it around because they think it looks cool, then wouldn't they have the right to replace the very firmware (one not native to the radio) or heart of the radio that makes it an M radio?
People do this all the time - they turn $20 usb tv tuners into software defined receivers, they jailbreak iPhones and root android devices, I mean - lets say you had an old TV and somehow you figured out
how to make it demodulate and decode SSTV or Hellshreiber, or use it to monitor your wireless camera system at home (without the factory camera receiver), you OWN the TV. It's yours. RCA / Sony / Magnavox or whomever made the TV has no legal or proprietary right to say that just because they didn't intend for the TV to be used that way, that you can't do it. What if you wrote a firmware for your old PLL synthesised am/fm radio and you could re-write the eeprom to expand the receive range into the aircraft of public safety bands? You own the radio. It's yours. You can do whatever you want, right?
Here is what I'm getting at, what if you took a super-duper XTS-MTS-APX trunks-a-lot radio with a flash
code of 9999-99999-9 with every bell and whistle and orange button you can imagine that you just bought from some college kid in Hong Kong (that raids the dumpsters at the Depot there) off of fleabay and you completely blank the radio. I don't mean just delete channels and scan lists and such, but you take away the firmware - the very heart, brain, and soul that makes it a radio. You kill it - it doesn't know it was ever a radio. It could have been a camera, a phone, a toaster, or maybe even the controller for your lady-friend's favorite marital aid. Now lets say you're a programmer, you know and understand how the original firmware and software were written, you know how the data blocks in the firmware had to be arranged in order to communicate and control the hardware in the radio, and you start writing and compiling code and this code includes everything from p25 and narrowband to DMR and tetra, and you never write the ability to even think about transmitting (remember the radio in question is dead and doesn't know it ever had that capability of transmitting, or that it was a vib--- I mean radio), and you successfully pack this firmware (none of it coming from M) you wrote to what used to be that super duper MTS-XTS-APX radio and now you write a software for it and this software acting much like any scanner programming software allows you to edit control channels, frequencies, scan lists, modulation type, etc., and you program the radio - I mean scanner which you just made. You would now have the most durable (compared to most scanners) scanning receiver out there. You aren't having to worry about bootleg software, *keys, accidentally transmitting where you shouldn't, 3-letter police in SUVs showing up, interfering with a system (computer network trespass) or anything. I know that radios used to be toolproofed to keep you from trying to add reatures you had not paid for, or adding unauthorized access ability to the radios, but what if you had taken away even the ability for the radio to be toolproofed (you killed it, remember), I just wonder if this would be possible. I'm sure that as soon as a hobbiest did this and made it public how they did it, M would send a platoon of lawyers to bring cease and desist papers, but again - would this be possible?
Oh the hornets nest of radio police I'm probably stirring with this one. No I don't need to know what M will
try to do to someone that p's them off... I already know,
People do this all the time - they turn $20 usb tv tuners into software defined receivers, they jailbreak iPhones and root android devices, I mean - lets say you had an old TV and somehow you figured out
how to make it demodulate and decode SSTV or Hellshreiber, or use it to monitor your wireless camera system at home (without the factory camera receiver), you OWN the TV. It's yours. RCA / Sony / Magnavox or whomever made the TV has no legal or proprietary right to say that just because they didn't intend for the TV to be used that way, that you can't do it. What if you wrote a firmware for your old PLL synthesised am/fm radio and you could re-write the eeprom to expand the receive range into the aircraft of public safety bands? You own the radio. It's yours. You can do whatever you want, right?
Here is what I'm getting at, what if you took a super-duper XTS-MTS-APX trunks-a-lot radio with a flash
code of 9999-99999-9 with every bell and whistle and orange button you can imagine that you just bought from some college kid in Hong Kong (that raids the dumpsters at the Depot there) off of fleabay and you completely blank the radio. I don't mean just delete channels and scan lists and such, but you take away the firmware - the very heart, brain, and soul that makes it a radio. You kill it - it doesn't know it was ever a radio. It could have been a camera, a phone, a toaster, or maybe even the controller for your lady-friend's favorite marital aid. Now lets say you're a programmer, you know and understand how the original firmware and software were written, you know how the data blocks in the firmware had to be arranged in order to communicate and control the hardware in the radio, and you start writing and compiling code and this code includes everything from p25 and narrowband to DMR and tetra, and you never write the ability to even think about transmitting (remember the radio in question is dead and doesn't know it ever had that capability of transmitting, or that it was a vib--- I mean radio), and you successfully pack this firmware (none of it coming from M) you wrote to what used to be that super duper MTS-XTS-APX radio and now you write a software for it and this software acting much like any scanner programming software allows you to edit control channels, frequencies, scan lists, modulation type, etc., and you program the radio - I mean scanner which you just made. You would now have the most durable (compared to most scanners) scanning receiver out there. You aren't having to worry about bootleg software, *keys, accidentally transmitting where you shouldn't, 3-letter police in SUVs showing up, interfering with a system (computer network trespass) or anything. I know that radios used to be toolproofed to keep you from trying to add reatures you had not paid for, or adding unauthorized access ability to the radios, but what if you had taken away even the ability for the radio to be toolproofed (you killed it, remember), I just wonder if this would be possible. I'm sure that as soon as a hobbiest did this and made it public how they did it, M would send a platoon of lawyers to bring cease and desist papers, but again - would this be possible?
Oh the hornets nest of radio police I'm probably stirring with this one. No I don't need to know what M will
try to do to someone that p's them off... I already know,
