Root Baseband and stock imgs + some other questions

[turnstyleclicker]

I grabbed the baseband modem images from one of the threads here. My question is regarding the all the extra files in the zips. Is there a way to just manually update the modem firmware from a stock image so as not to touch any of the other files?
from the shell or adb?

Also, I have the tmobile Zmax 4.4.2, can I just dirty flash 4.4.4 right over it without any ill effects (cache wipe and dalvik though) ?
I have read that people have bootloop issues moving to 4.4.4 from the tmobile version of the zmax, since tmobile has not officially released any updates for this device.

My other question was regarding the stock tethering app. For the life of me I can not find it on 4.4.2 tmo version!!! I can manually run hostapd and set it up command line fine but if I use the only icon on the GUI it always calls out to tmobile servers and puts a box on the screen saying "verifying account data". So something somewhere is hardcoded to check with tmobile every time I hit the stupid tether icon, and it FAILS if I am using vpn. So I want to disable this as it is barfing my personal account info over every VPN I connect to.

I have scoured through all the sqlite3 settings.db and used settings commands and verified that the phone is completely clean of the methods I know of for checking tethering rights. So what I want to do is either find the apk that is calling out and recompile it or can someone just save me the trouble and point me to how and why 4.4.2 is forcing some account authentication before activating the wifi tether?

Thank you for your time.

 

[turnstyleclicker]

carrier IQ was all over the phone in the standard rom from tmob. I updated to one of the dev lollipop builds although it looks like reskinned 4.4.4.
I still have not tracked down what forcing 'account verification' to happen every time tethering was activated. I read through all the docs and the standard base source and checked all the classes. According to the stock phone its clean and unlocked.
Before I flashed the CM12.1 reskin (candy), I was seeing Verizon, Tmobile, AT&T towers.
Now I am back to Just T and ATT. No more verizon towers.

Also, it goes nuts switching from 3g to 4g to H to H+ to LTE then back to 3g after a disconnect, is this "power collapse" feature?
I am used to the hidden menu settings from emode.apk where you can adjust priority and band usage. In CM12 I can not find anything that gives me that sort of control. Does this rom come with CM12's standard hidden dial codes?

This sounds stupid to all of you but how do I access the internal gsm modem directly?
do an adb pipe to one of the ttys ?
I can check baseband support by using the standard AT command set for the gsrm modem.

Also, one thing I noticed about all CM builds is the degraded camera. I know they where using overscan to get higher res pictures but it seems that the camera is now a standard 2mp camera and the focus does absolutely nothing at all. I have always noticed this on all CM builds and I assumed it was from some patent on overscanning the actual camera sensor. Is it possible to graft in the old camera software from the stock ota so you have 2 choices for interface?

VPN works, which is a plus plus, but none of the apps can us the tun interface correctly except for the built in browser. I'll play with the dev chrome and see if it can pass traffic over the tun.

Just PM me if you want to answer any of this as I know most people here aren't interested in any of this.
I would love for MC to point me to the dev trees and the build scripts so I could contribute whatever.