the aj blog

A cheap cable and the open-source software BitPim can be extremely helpful for anybody that’s unwilling to pay for ringtones, through a service such as Verizon’s Get it Now, or spending money picture messaging MIDI files to yourself, or for any other reason.

Materials you’ll need:

• A USB to Samsung phone cable. OEM or an aftermarket cable is fine. Mine was from eBay, 99 cents with $7 shipping. Just bid with caution. Or, I guess, you could buy one on Amazon too.
• The latest version of BitPim that will be used to manipulate the filesystem.
• A computer (I am very, very sorry for anyone that didn’t know that).

Step 0

• A disclaimer, before anything else. By reading the rest of this article, you assume all responsibility in modifying your phone. This is by no means an official guide (but hopefully a decent one) and it’s honestly not my problem if this article leaves you with a hundred buck paperweight aka brick. If you don’t feel up to moving around the filesystem, try Bruce’s method in the comments (thanks!).
• Install BitPim by downloading and simply running the installer.

Step 1

• Connect the USB end of the cable to the USB port in your computer, and the proprietary Samsung end to your phone’s port. In electronics, NEVER EVER force anything if it won’t fit. Around 98% of the time, doing so will result in a broken device.

Step 2

• Add your file to the phone’s filesystem. In BitPim, to see the filesystem, you may have to enable viewing it first. View -> View Filesystem should do it. Your file should be either a MIDI or MP3, although MP3s are larger in size and therefore you can fit less on your phone, and they’ll take longer to upload. Click your way down the filesystem to “/brew/mod/” and click on “mr.” Some files might show up in the right hand box, but maybe not. Either way, right click on the box and Offline Phone to protect it from messing up the operation and damaging your phone. Even further, right click on anything in the tree and select Backup entire tree … saving the zip somewhere you’ll remember in case you need to restore your phone. Then, right click again and select New File… then navigate to your ringtone. Don’t have one? On Windows machines, try looking in C:\Windows\Media\ for .mid files. Press OK, and give it some time. Once it says the status is “Ready”, right click and Reboot Phone.

Step 3

• The real trick is getting the phone to RECOGNIZE the ringtone. Once you get back to the same screen of the /ff/brew/mod/mr directory, right click -> Save the file MrInfo.db somewhere easily accessible, like your desktop. Open it up with notepad or your favorite plain text editor, and it will probably look something like this: /brew/mod/mr/town.mp3|0|0 that is, if your ringtone was named “town.mp3″. After each filename is a pipe character (|), a number, another pipe, and another number. For the new files, it will be 0 and 0. For a ringtone, the first number should be 0 and the second should be 3. So select just the second 0 and type “3″. Save your file, and back in BitPim, right click -> Overwrite on MrInfo.db, then select where you saved your edited version of it. Right click -> Reboot Phone/power cycle, and don’t worry if Windows machines exclaim that “A USB device has malfunctioned!” It’s just some cheap cables and their sneaky USB tricks. Just hope the cable doesn’t short into a cloud of smoke (I’ve known a few devices to do that…), and you’re good!

On this day, August 20, the aj software blog is officially launching! Yaaaay!

Things to expect:

• Detailed articles about what I’ve been messing around with
• Occasionally random things I’ve discovered  that I just HAVE to say
• Sometimes, just sometimes, a Jott about something short. (Jott’s going to start charging soon. Waah)
  
• Software, every now and then. Some will be small web apps, others Visual Basic, and other yet just in random languages I’ve been learning.

Things not to expect:

• Updates as frequent as the NY Times
• The world’s largest waffle iron in my backyard
• My identity. I am anonymous.