I have a Phone
 

It's an NEC e616. I want to be able to it. I want to be able to look at every file it has stored, and not just in the

Video
Pictures
Sound
Other

folders, but in all it's hard drive. Eventually I want to modify the OS. Trouble is, it doesn't show up on my computer as a hard drive. There's nothing to mount. I am a total 'noob'.

I connect it to my computer via USB cable.

I'm thinking maybe the Terminal can help me.

Any comments welcomed. Thanks

AFAIK, if it doesn't show up in /Volumes, you cannot "ls -a" it.

That's where the challenge lies!

Not really a challenge.. if it's not a mountable volume, then it's not a mountable volume. Unless you're equipped with a magic wand..

BitPim@freshmeat might get you started. This is software for a different phone, but it does what you're looking for. might try emailing the developer.

But surely any hard drive is mountable? What makes it not mountable?

Thanks for the link Elvis, I'll send him a mail

If it's a hard drive formatted in a format that OS X doesn't understand, it's not going to be able to mount it.

Example, no Windows box can mount an HFS+ drive without the help of 3rd party software.

A driver makes a hard drive mountable. There is no way that any hard drive ever can be mounted without a driver. Under any circumstance.

The reason that you are not usually aware of needing a driver to mount a hard drive is that OS X (and any other modern operating system) includes certain drivers with the operating system.

They have drivers for many broad types of things (called classes), for example (since this is an easy class of devices to understand) there is a USB mouse class driver in OS X that supports two buttons and a scroll wheel. If you would like to use your mouse with OS X without installing anything additional, you can have support for two buttons and a scroll wheel. However, if you would like to have support for 6 buttons and a scroll wheel (for example), you would need to install a driver from the manufacturer or a third party with support for those additional buttons.

Another class is USB storage devices. There is a class driver for USB storage devices built in to OS X (and Windows, and most versions of Linux today). This class driver means that if the device follows guidelines, then there will not need to be any additional drivers written by the manufacturer--it will appear to "just work".

However, for something like the phone you have, there is no good reason for the manufacturer of the device to comply with the USB storage device class. In fact, there are reasons that the company that sells you the phone service specifically does not want you to be able to use it as a class compliant storage device--that means you can avoid the high-priced services that they offer to sell you $5 ringtones and such. And the company that manufacturers the phone's REAL customer is the company that sells you phone service, since that is where most people today get their phones.

So, the phone manufacturer does not make their device class compliant with USB storage devices.

If you want it to be a USB storage device, you will need someone to write a driver for it.

And you will probably have to pay for that driver, if it exists. Unless someone wrote it as an open source project.

As far as I know, no driver exists for your telephone, but by all means look around. Good luck!

Trevor

Thanks yet again Trevor. Very informative.

There is an open source project which some clever guy made to enable file transfer between the phone and the mac. Like I said though, it only gives access to certain folders.

In communication with the developer: he informed me he uses a password (9130) to gain authentication in his request to have a look at the phone's directory. But he no longer works on this project. He told me my best lead is to write a script/program or write as part of the program (using the provided source code) a function that attempts to connect using every possible 4 digit passwords untill it finds one that matches. Hopefully there is some kind of master password. He said using his classes it shouldn't be too hard but I am a total newbie when it comes to computer programming.

The fact that he has written classes to interact with the phone, If i can extract this class, turn it into a driver will I then be able to force entry or force mount the device via the terminal?

Bit Pim has given me more information about the phone's USB connection:

-- -- -- -- --

Active: True - Your operating system shows this driver and port is correctly configured and a device is attached

Available: True - it was possible to open this port

Description: USB Device - Vendor NEC Corp. Produce #010C (Interface #04)

libusb: True - This indicates if the usb library is in use to access this device. Operating system device drivers (if any) are bypassed when BitPim talks to the device

Name: usb::001::006-0409-010c-ff-ff::4 - This is the name the port is known to your operating system as

Protocol: Data / Generic - This is the protocol the USB device claims to speak

usb-productstring: NEC 616

usb-vendorstring: NEC

-- -- -- -- -- --

Is this any use to me?

bounce! (please help)

I'd try asking at a good phone forum like this one:
http://howardforums.com/

To add to the comments above, you do not have direct access to the phone's storage. The phone's developer provided a way to access one part of the device, but it is extremely easy to block other parts. My phone has built-in memory and a flash card. I can access the flash card through the built-in USB, but it is impossible to access the phone's built-in memory that way. I have to buy a special cable and software to go there.

You also mentioned that you want to modify the OS. This is probably possible, but as the OS is almost certainly not open source you will have to do the tinkering at the byte level. Unless you are a very experienced machine language programmer you won't get very far.

However, if you open the phone up and remove the drive (I'm assuming it's a MicroDrive or similar) you can probably put it in a firewire case and then have full access, assuming it's not formatted with some proprietary scheme or locked up in the drive controller.

Consider the phone completely disposable as soon as you pick up the screwdriver :D

hah. Buggery.

That's a good idea though... Perhaps If installed my own hard drive on the phone, all the components would be there already... Anyone know of an OS that understands phone talk!?

first off I know NOTHING about the phone or anything else....

but I found this link (http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/archive/...hp/t-3480.html) and there seems to be some software at the bottom end of the link that gets things working..... hope it helps:D

thanks for that. I had already seen that.