LOL, doogald, I just saw this and was gonna post it, but you beat me to it (again! ).

Wayback machine, indeed!

 

I'm surprised that HTC even remembers there was a phone called Eris.

 

Can someone please explain the significance of this. I have 2 rooted Eris'

 

It would basically allow you to more easily recover / restore your phone should something "bad" happen to it (like bad memory blocks, a boot loop that wipes don't fix, etc.).

Having the unlocked bootloader allows you to use the fastboot utility to flash new software (recovery, system images, etc.) to get you going again.

When it locked, your options are severely limited.

Cheers!

 

Saw the article on Droid Life just moments ago and had to blink a couple times when I saw a pic of our trusty old Eris.
Kudos to HTC for remembering and including our phone.

Haven't been here for a while since switching to the Nexus, kinda feeling guilty.
My Eris is still alive and kicking!

 

Cool!

If the details / process isn't too lengthy or verbose, please let us know. I'm curious about what they tell and provide you (small, bootable .zip file, etc.?).

I briefly visited the HTC site but halted when I that they wanted us to sign-up via email.

Thanks!

 

On the rezound they sent you a key that is used to unlock the phone. It's super easy to unlock via the site.

time to tweak the old eris one more time. =-)

 

Cool and thanks for the update...

Probably the easiest way to regain S-OFF would be to flash the base root ROM...

I seem to remember when I did some mirror-testing of an issue a member was having and I put my phone back to the 2.1 leak state, I did have to flash jcase's misc image, too.

Lemme know if you need some files or help...its been a while for me, too, though .

Cheers!

 

youll need to be on current firmware(at least the radio and bootloader) to get the hboot to give you an unlock token.

i would advise against doing this,since the eris only has s-off with an eng hboot. ive unlocked and used the htcdev hboot on several s-off phones,and have messed with it quite a bit on my rezound.

a big prollem with htcdev on other devices is that you cannot write to the boot partition from recovery. in order to flash new roms,you must flash the rom in recovery,and if it contains a different kernel that is neccessary,you must seperately flash that in fastboot.

its certainly better than nothing,but compared to s-off,or even "normal" s-on flashing on the eris,its a PITA.

i could be wrong... it may be that unlocked s-on flashing will work the same as it does with 1.47 or 1.49 hboot s-on,but if its not...

be aware that you may be stuck with that hboot forever the cdma evo 3d guys still have not found a way to downgrade back to s-offable software,and my experiences with it on the incredible were that it remained in place even after downgrading to eclair wich uses a completely different hboot than froyo or GB. we were lucky on the incredible and got an older version of unrevoked to turn the secureflag off with the htcdev locked hboot in place. with the eris this wont be an option,and even changing the misc image and flashing the root rom may not bring the 1.49.2000 eng hboot back.

ive run htcdev on my s off merge,inc,wildfire,inspire and incredible 2. when combined with s-off,there is benefits of it since gives extra fastboot commands. sort of a "half-engineering" bootloader

i wouldnt risk it,tho,without a gameplan to get rid of it if you find boot is no longer writable via recovery. all the crazy stuff yall have seen me do to my lil buddy,no way ill flash an htcdev hboot on him!

may want to look thru this thread before continuing to try and get htcdev to work: http://androidforums.com/incredible-all-things-root/495687-htc-dev-unlock-problems.html we dowgraded from GB to froyo,and then from GB to eclair,and the 1.02.0000 hboot would not allow itself to be replaced with the older hboots

my 2 cents,anyway,for what theyre worth

 

scary,its not unlike unlocking the gnex,with exception that you need to get a token to flash instead of the simple command "fastboot oem unlock"

in a nutshell:
-you update your hboot to one that has support locked s-on
-get identifier token (fastboot oem get identifier token)
-submit identifier token to htc(paste into the box on their website)
-recieve an unlock token in email that is unique to your phone
-flash unlock token (fastboot flash unlock-code.bin)
-select "yes unlock bootloader" on phone screen. phone does a factory reset and reboots.

from here you can fastboot flash a recovery,and flash root files in recovery.

you can also flash recovery,boot,and system images in hboot,but with an s-on device the info on the android info text document is now important mainversion on the text document must be equal to or greater than main version of your phone. i dont even bother with PxxxIMG files hardly anymore,unless i have to. "fastboot flash or fastboot boot is alot easier.

while it is unlocked it IS still s-on and doing certain security checks.

last thing of importance with htcdev is that its only unlocking system,boot,and recovery. you cant change hboots or radios. at least on other devices,since the eris can flash radios in recovery,i guess its possible it may act differently than what im used to on the rezound.

 

im gonna check it out right now tho id still caution you against flashing it. let someone else be the guinea pig on this one

edit: i selected eris,downloaded the hboot RUU,and proceded... steps 1-10 look identical to every other phone ive htcdev unlocked.

the RUU is only the new hboot that contains unlock support. here is rom.zip if you want to take a look: http://www.mediafire.com/?ary5l92a7aztpm4

i still am afraid the new hboot may make it a pain for you to flash roms,and even restore backups that contain different kernels,and you may not be able to get rid of it after.

 

Where are you getting the info about an ota? The ruu updates the bootloader,then an unlock code unlocks it.

Edit: just looked at your screen shot,apparently you weren't running the most current firmware when you ran the RUU. I can't look right now since I'm on my.phone at wprk,but you'll just need to run the newest ruu we have,and then let the phone ota to most current Rom/firmware.

If you really want to do this,you could install the newest radio from the most recent ota,and then install 1.51 in hboot.

I actually got that same ruu error when I tried to run the ruu on my inc,wich was running froyo instead of gb

 

I'll give it some thought. The chance of it being not reversible is quite high - remember that even in the "from recovery" methods of flashing the Eris hboot, the recovery boot does not actually perform the flashing - it merely stages it for the (existing) bootloader, provides some instructions in the BCB (Boot Control Block), and then reboots the phone - it is always the (pre-existing) bootloader that does the security checks and hboot flashing, if any. This also holds for radio images as well.

To date, the only known methods of changing the Eris bootloader have been:

(1) with a HTC-signed PB00IMG.zip** (crypto method is not publicly known nor hacked)
(2) with an S-OFF bootloader (all security checks turned off) via fastboot

** subject to version number checking performed by the pre-existing bootloader

So... I don't mind losing S-OFF or even hard bricking my spare Eris, but it's hard to see what useful things are gained by doing so (except perhaps figuring out how to rescue a user that accidentally stumbles in to this, or refurbs with 1.51 start showing up).

As long as we contemplate performing risky flashing experiments, maybe there is a way to do it in a way where we gain some additional useful knowledge. For instance, what if we (I) try byte-patching version numbers into older S-ON bootloaders and flashing them to see if we can alter the "main version" checking behavior - if that could be proven to work on older bootloaders, it might also extend to to the 1.51 hboot, which would (in principle) allow a (byte-patched version of) it to be removed with older HTC PB00IMG.zip flashes. That would allow us to flash it for experimentation, but be able to remove it.

Suggestions welcome - put your thinking caps on!

eu1

 

Hmm,doogald not sure why it dint work,from what you described you definately shoulda been good to go.

Thanks for jumpin in eu1. Cant wait to see what you come up with... I'll help any way I can wish I.had a spare Eris... Knowing how to get rid of it for the reasons you mentioned i think is extremely worthwhile

 

Guys,

I'll still offer-up my near pristine Eris if any of you really needs or wants it...

I still like to have it around, but its mostly for testing versions of my apps on older versions of Android...

I'm happy to send it off to one of you three should you nuke one of your little guys.

Just let me know .

Thanks!