Loading a firmware on the Vodafone Station

Loading a firmware on the Vodafone Station

My pages weren't very clear about this and I'm sure they caused confusion as I still saw
many downloads for the hacked B33 version in the web logs.
So, you may wonder what's the right firmware for you...
As of December 6th, 2009, I recommend

In case you are in Italy and use Vodafone as an ISP:
- B36 if you simply want to upgrade if Vodafone didn't
- B36 NV2 if you want to hack and do more advanced things

In case you want to unblock and use another ISP (not Vodafone):
- The Spanish B21 in case you simply want to unblock.
- The Spanish B21 in case you hack. Not as good as B36 NV2
   for general hacking (but B36 NV2 doesn't do unblocking!) but it can be done
   well once you load the EXT2 filesystem module manually.

In case you just want to hack, and you don't care about using the VS as a modem:
- B36 NV2

Older firmwares, like Spanish B19, or Frediano Ziglio's hacked B33 firmware are there
mostly for completeness and for historical purposes =P
I do not recommend you to flash them on your Vodafone Station, unless you want to try them out for fun.

This is the procedure you will have to follow to load the hacked firmware:
- Download this file. It is bzip2 compressed, you will have to uncompress it (you can use 7-zip on Windows).
- To be sure assign a static IP to your machine, with gateway 192.168.1.1, and netmask 255.255.255.240.
   The IP of your machine will have to be 192.168.1.x, where x is a number from 2 to 15, and check if doesn't conflict with anything else
   on your Local Area Connection.
- First, turn your Vodafone Station off
- Get something long and thin (I used a pencil), and keep the reset button pressed with it (BEFORE TURNING IT ON!)
- Turn on your Vodafone Station while still pressing the reset button. Keep it pressed for a bit of time (I kept it pressed for a minute).
- Connect to http://192.168.1.1 with Mozilla Firefox (Internet Explorer and Opera won't work).
- Now a page in English will appear, complete with form to upload an updated firmware from your ISP (how ironic!).
   Specify the file you uncompressed earlier, and there will be a button to accept the operation.

Now, it will take some minutes, and it will say it is re-programming the flash memory.
Do not turn your Vodafone Station off, you could damage the contents on the flash.
After that, it will reboot.
Don't get surprised if the connection to the Internet does not seem to work for the first minutes, it's perfectly normal
and it happened to me as well. It will work fine after that.

You can revert to using DHCP instead of a static IP later, if you want.
Do not forget to turn TR69 off if you don't want Vodafone to be able to send commands to your Vodafone Station
It is easy in Spanish firmwares (do it from the webUI) while in Italian firmwares you can only do it in B36 NV2
by using cfgctrl.

What, now? Keep reading the "Linux on the Vodafone Station" document.
You now have a big-endian MIPS Linux box which can be accessed remotely.

To access the router configuration page if you have flashed a Spanish firmware, access http://192.168.0.1, and then login as user "admin" and password "VF-EShg553" for B21, and "admin" and "admin" for B19.
After this it is like configuring a normal modem router, and it explains itself.

Last Updated: December 6th, 2009
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