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- PART VIII. IDENTIFYING THE ESN IN YOUR CELLULAR PHONE
-
- Depending on what model phone you have, the ESN will be located on a
- PROM. The PROM is programmed at the factory, and installed usually with the
- security fuse blown to prevent tampering. The code on the PROM might
- possibly be obtained by unsoldering it from the cellular phone, putting it in
- a PROM reader, and then obtaining a memory map of the chip.
-
- The PROM is going to have from sixteen to twenty-eight leads coming
- from it. It is a bipolar PROM. SEE ESN.GIF FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.
- The majority of phones will accept the National Semiconductor 32x8 PROM,
- which will hold the ESN and cannot be reprogrammed. If the ESN is known
- on the phone, it is possible to trace the memory map by installing the PROM
- into a reader, and obtaining the fuse map from the PROM by triggering the
- "READ MASTER" switch of the PROM programmer. In addition, most PROM
- programming systems include a verify and compare switch to allow you to
- compare the programming of one PROM with another.
-
- As said earlier, the ESN is uniformly black with sixteen to
- twenty-eight leads emanating from it's rectangular body, or square shaped
- body. If it is the dual-in-line package chip, (usually found in
- transportables and installed phones),it is rectangular. If it is the plastic
- leaded chip carrier (PLCC), it will be square and have a much smaller
- appearance. Functionally, they are the same chip, but the PLCC is used with
- hand held cellular phones because of the need for reduced size circuitry.
- It will have a notch within, and also have writing in small white letters
- on it. (A black chip with small white letters? Should be easy to spot huh?).
- Look for the follow letters on the chip:
-
- MMI
- TI
- NS
- HARRIS
- NSC
- MB
- DM
- HM
- AMD
- TBP
- MOTOROLA
- AMPS
-
-
- Once you have found the chip, try ordering a new one (maybe a couple of new
- ones) from the businesses in the MERCHANDISE SECTION located at the end of
- this file.
-
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