Dial-Up Internet Anywhere: Use your Treo 650 to connect your laptop to the Internet, even if the carriers say it can't be done.(How 2.0: Hacks, Upgrades, Projects, Gripes, Tips & Tricks/Void Your Warranty)(Review)

Byline: Mike Haney

If your Treo 650 can connect to the Internet, and your laptop can connect to your Treo 650 via Bluetooth, shouldn't you be able to get online with your laptop, anywhere you get a cell signal, using your Treo as the conduit?

In fact, you can. The function is called dial-up networking (DUN), and your Treo has it. You just can't see it. Instead, when you click on your phone's Bluetooth screen, you get the screen at right, without DUN. Why? Sprint says it's because PalmOne, the Treo's manufacturer, did not have the correct DUN drivers when the Treo launched. Cingular says the same thing.

But Matthew Fogle, a telecom IT worker and hacker who goes by the name Shadowmite, doesn't believe them. That's because he pulled apart the Bluetooth system file inside the Treo and found that the dun option was there; it was simply programmed not to show up. So he modified the file and surprised the frustrated Treo community by posting it on a treocentral.com forum.

Fogle says he'll pull the instructions and hacked files from his site (shadowmite.com) if the carriers ask him to, but a Sprint spokesperson says that although it's not supported, enabling DUN with the hack will not violate your terms of service. Check out the instructions below, and start dialing in.

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GETTING DUN DONE

We hacked a Sprint Treo 650, but Fogle has a modified Bluetooth file for hacking Cingular and unlocked GSM models as well

1. Download a free program called FileZ from nosleep.net and install it on your treo.

2. Download the patched BtManager.prc file from shadowmite.com and copy it to an SD card.

3. Remove the battery cover on your Treo and hit the reset button to do a soft reset.

4. Insert the SD card into the Treo and open FileZ. Navigate to the patched BtManager.prc file, choose "Copy" and select "Internal" as the destination.

5. Do another soft reset, turn on Bluetooth, and you should see the screen [left] with DUN enabled.

6. To dial up, turn on your laptop's Bluetooth, "discover" the Treo, and create a dial-up profile with "[your Sprint Vision username]@sprintpcs.com" in the username field, your Vision password in the password field and #777 as the phone number. (This is for Sprint; see shadowmite.com for other carriers.) Note that while connected you will be using voice minutes as well as your data plan, so be careful if you don't have unlimited data usage.

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ANOTHER 4 WAYS TO GET MORE FROM YOUR TREO

Instructions at shadowmite.com

*Add Wi-Fi to your Treo by installing a modified driver for PalmOne's SD Wi-Fi card, which, strangely, is designed to work with Tungsten PDAs but not the Treo. Fogle cautions that this hack is still pretty buggy.

*Install custom ROMs, which determine the default application set and functions on your Treo, so you could, for example, remove RealPlayer and enable DUN in one move.

*Switch to Verizon. This hack is pretty complex, but you can make a Sprint Treo 650 work on Verizon's network.

*Change start-up and end screens. See shadowmite.com for custom graphics.

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DEPT: VOID YOUR WARRANTY INVESTIGATOR: MIKE HANEY TECH: Treo dial-up networking COST: Free TIME: 10 minutes DABBLER MASTER 2