Tag: amazon

Jailbreaking a Kindle 4 Non Touch (2012), Take 2

When last we saw our intrepid hero, he was running a factory reset on his new-ish Kindle 4 Non Touch (Black) circa 2012. 1  He’d managed to jailbreak it and then install some new screensavers, before going for broke to install SSH and turning off the Kindle’s ability to appear as a drive on Windows, preventing all future side-loaded content.

It’s taken me a bit of fiddling, but I’ve now gotten the the Kindle to where it is working “as intended.”  After the factory reset and arduously reentering my ridiculously long WiFi and Amazon passwords, I couldn’t deliver the books that had been registered with this account to this device.  The books that I still had checked out simply wouldn’t deliver.  I figured maybe they were stuck in the intertubes and I should send a few more after it.  When I tried to deliver the books through the Libby App, my Amazon page pulled up in the mobile browser as expected, but when I clicked the button in Amazon to deliver the book, the page simply said, “Sorry, we couldn’t find that page.”  I was stuck with books I had previously checked out through Libby in my Amazon account which I couldn’t deliver to this device – and was unable to check out additional books to appear in my Amazon account.2 Ah, I found another way in which this error can occur – when you try to download a graphic novel to your ancient Kindle 4, get the “Sorry, we couldn’t find that page” error making you think your Libby app is borked, only to copy/paste the link into a PC browser and discovery it’s really because “We could find a registered device to read this title” and you realize the problem is you don’t own any Kindle devices that can read comics.

I took the browser back to the page with the button to send the delivery, copied the URL, and entered it into my desktop browser – which provided a much more informative error message.  The desktop Amazon page said there were no devices registered to my account!  I went and changed the name of my device in the Amazon “Digital Content” page and then made sure to make it my “default” device was this same one.  Having the Kindle check for new updated content wasn’t working, so I restarted it and checked again.  This time the books started to appear.  Yay!  I now have a basic as-intended Amazon experience!

But that’s not good enough.  I want …

Skeletor would never steer us wrong

Let’s try jailbreaking it again.  What could possibly go wrong this time?!

  1. Confirm Firmware
    1. I’m already running the latest 4.1.4 firmware, so I should be ready to proceed.  You can see the firmware version at the bottom of the screen under Menu Button -> Settings.
  2. Identify The Kindle
    1. I didn’t need to do this, since I had previously identified my Kindle.  The easiest way to ID your Kindle3
    2. Wait for the Kindle to boot into diagnostics mode.  (I saw the screen take on a broken / static appearance for just a second.  Don’t freak out.)
    3. Select “D) Exit, Reboot or Disable Diags” and then “R) Reboot System”.  In order to “Q) To continue”, you’ll need to click to the left on the directional pad.
    4. Be patient while the jailbreak does it’s thing.
  • Jailbroken
    1. After going through all of this, Kindle eventually reappeared as a drive on Windows.  I safely ejected it once more.  I saw the screen go blank, then the main page come up showing all content missing.  After a moment, even though I’m still disconnected from WiFi, the content returned with “You are Jailbroken” appearing as the topmost “book.”  The entire contents of this document is the statement “It is safe to delete this document.”
    2. The wiki suggests jailbreaking allows minor things like getting custom screensavers and fonts, but that the “more fun stuff” requires gaining SSH access to the device.
    3. This is where your intrepid hero ran afoul last time…  let’s see what happens next!
    4. I’m trying to keep this guide-of-guides as organized as possible.
  • Custom Screen Savers
    1. The thread for screen saver hacks starts here, in the wiki.  But, really, you’ll want this file (kindle-ss-0.47.N-r18980.tar.xz) from the forum post by NiLuJe above.
    2. Upload the “Update_ss_0.47.N_k4_install.bin” file to the root directory of the Kindle.
    3. Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Update Your Kindle.  Confirm.  Wait for it to restart.
    4. Once it’s booted up again, navigate to “/linkss/screensavers/” and upload additional images.  To make my own screensavers, I downloaded artwork I like, rotated them 90 degrees, scaled them down to 600 px wide x 800 px tall, reduced the DPI to 72, and saved as a PNG file.  Easy, right!?

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    5. I chose to add blank files named “random” and “shuffle” in the /linkss” directory so that the screensavers I uploaded will cycle through.  A blank “reboot” file, followed by a reboot, is apparently necessary in order to change and update screensavers.  So, safely eject, Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Restart.

    • I’ve reached the point where my Kindle was at the end of the day yesterday.  A fully functional Kindle 4, but with custom screensavers.  I’m not gonna lie, these magnificent pieces of art look amazing even scaled down and on a black and white screen.  Now that I’ve gone through everything a second time, I think I may try pushing my luck and going for the SSH installation again.  I mean, what’s the worst that could happen!?

    Kindle 4 Non Touch Customization
    1. Futzing With An Old Kindle
    2. Jailbreaking a Kindle 4 Non Touch (2012), Take 2
    3. SSH into a Kindle 4 from 2012
    4. Calibre, Kindle 4 Non Touch
    1. Listed as “NoTouch” sometimes, but that just sounds too weird for me to use except in instances where I want my notes to match what appears on various guides… [↩]
    2. I’m skipping past all the uninstall, restoring Libby nonsense that went on in between these other steps… [↩]
    3. But, really, I’m speaking to my future self when I have to do this a third time… in which case “my Kindle”…) is to read the serial number off the back or from Menu Button -> Settings -> Tab page to “Device Info” and it should be listed as “Serial Number” whatever.
    4. Look up the serial number against this MobileRead wiki list to find the Model Name and Nicknames for the Kindle.  In my case, I have a serial number starting with either “B023, 9023”, a Model Name of “Kindle NoTouch Black (2012)” with a Nickname of “K4” or “K4B.”
  • Jailbreak
    1. This is the part of the process that I found to get extra confusing.  There is so much interplay between the MobileRead forums and their wiki and the files you download, that I was frequently get caught in a loop referring from one page to another to a file and back again.  For future reference I’ll link where the loop starts – but then link directly or as close to directly to the necessary file as possible.
    2. The loop starts here under “How to install the Jailbreak Hack.”  It ends at this MobileRead forum post by NiLuJe from 09/15/2012 and a link to “kindle-k4-jailbreak-1.8.N.zip“  It ends at this MobileRead forum post by NiLuJe from 10/18/2013 last updated on 01/03/2025 and a link to “kindle-k4-jailbreak-1.8.N-r18977.tar.xz”
      1. You may be wondering, “MakerBlock!  What the heck?!  What happened here?!”  The answer is that while stuck in the loop that absolutely lead to that first forum post, looking for further information later on lead me to an updated version of this file.  While all you have to do is read what is happening here, I need to uninstall the 2015 jailbreak so I can install the latest r18977 version.  I’ll resume in two restarts.  I am fairly confident this is where I screwed up last time.  I didn’t see this latest version of the jailbreak firmware.
    3. Download the file, open the ZIP, and read the “README” file nestled within.
    4. The README directs:
      1. Connect the Kindle via data USB cable to a PC
      2. Copy the following to the “root” drive of the Kindle
        1. data.tar.gz
        2. ENABLE_DIAGS
        3. diagnostic_logs “folder”
      3. Safely eject the Kindle from the PC
      4. Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Restart ((If you don’t see “Restart” something probably went wrong [↩]

    • Futzing With An Old Kindle

    The Kindle was an incredible device for 2012.  E-ink display, 2-4GB of storage, wifi, ability to download thousands of books, purchase and borrow new books wirelessly, play games, and battery that could last for weeks.  We bought one new back then, but it’s tied to my wife’s account and I don’t want to lose access to the books on it or accidentally brick it.  $30 and a week later, I have another Kindle 4 Non-Touch shipped to my door courtesy of an eBay seller.

    Obviously, DRM’s upside for content owners is protecting themselves from IP theft.  The downside for everyone else is being treated like a criminal.  I just want to read the books I legitimately have access to on any device I own without a whole bunch of rigamarole, authentications, and nonsense.

    Fortunately this Kindle is so old mature that many of the content and firmware problems that might have once existed and somewhat solved.  Using Calibre, I can remove the DRM off the books I have on our original Kindle and drop them onto this NTM1 Kindle.  If I go so far as to jailbreak this Kindle, I can install new screensavers which would be a super cool upgrade.  I followed the various slightly-new-hostile guides through the MobileRead forums and wiki, and even successfully jailbroke the Kindle, installed new cool screensavers, and brought over books through Calibre.  The one downside was2 big enough that I kept pushing.

    So true…

    That one downside was that while books on a stock Kindle appear on the main screen where you can page through them all, you can also add them to custom “Collections” where once they’ve been assigned to one, they’ll disappear from view on the main screen where they are now only visible in the one or more Collections to which they’ve been assigned.  It essentially operates much as a “tagging” system.  Well, after bringing over the books via Calibre, apparently the process removes something from the metadata for the books that permits the Kindle device to flag them for non-displaying on the main screen.  The result is that while books can still be assigned to collections, they’ll also still clutter up the main screen.  Obviously, I there’s no way I can deal with this, so I decided to explore other options.

    Once you’ve got your Kindle jailbroken, you can start to do things like SSH into it, change some core settings, and otherwise just tinker around changing things and ripping stuff out.  While I didn’t brick this device, I did get it to the point where it would neither enter a debug mode nor permit me to access it over USB to sideload books via Calibre.  I don’t trust the Amazon email delivery system well enough to want to send de-DRM’ed books to the address Amazon so graciously assigned the Kindle, so that option is out.

    This has lead me to a factory reset, fresh Kindle, and the need to enter my ridiculously long WiFi network password and Amazon account password back into the Kindle via the 5 key directional pad.

    Wish me luck.

    Kindle 4 Non Touch Customization
    1. Futzing With An Old Kindle
    2. Jailbreaking a Kindle 4 Non Touch (2012), Take 2
    3. SSH into a Kindle 4 from 2012
    4. Calibre, Kindle 4 Non Touch
    1. New to me [↩]
    2. Cue ominous foreshadowing [↩]

    Buy Your Own Modem: Save $120/year and Get Faster Internet

    money fire photo
    Hello Comcast

    If you’ve got Comcast internet you’re probably “renting” their cable modem for something INSANE like $10 a month.1

    Stop it.  Just stop that nonsense right now.

    You can buy a brand new modem off Amazon for $65 (shipped with prime!), hook up the modem in 5 minutes, and have Comcast authorize the new modem in about 15 minutes.  It will pay for itself in about six months, last years, and as a bonus, you’ll almost certainly have faster internet access than your neighbor who is still using the rented modem.  Here’s what you do:

    1. Buy the “ARRIS SURFboard SB6141 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem – Retail Packaging – White” from Amazon.23  It is possible that some of the models have changed.  You can confirm the latest Comcast compatible models here.
    2. Follow the directions from Xfinity/Comcast to activate your modem
    3. If you get hung up, you may need to call up Xfinity/Comcast at 1 (800) 934-6489.  They had to take one additional step to authorize my modem on their end, but the process was painless.

    Switching car insurance or brown bagging your lunch might save you a little money.  But, I have to tell you, it was immensely satisfying to save money, not pay Comcast as much, and speed up my internet connection all in the same morning.

    1. Photo by Images_of_Money [↩]
    2. The white plastic injection molded shell is $65 and the black plastic injection molded shell is $100.  Heck, they can paint mine yellow for an extra $35 [↩]
    3. Yes, that’s an affiliate link [↩]

    Dogs and cats living together!

    Real wrath of God type stuff
    Real wrath of God type stuff

    I’m basically through with CD’s.  I don’t even want the ones I have.  I would much rather just have the MP3’s since they’re just so much easier to organize and play.  This has been the case for a while now – the last time I bought a physical CD was four years ago.  The CD before that was eight years ago.

    I was looking at buying an album off of Amazon the other day only to discover it was $3 cheaper for me to buy the physical CD, which comes with an MP3 “autorip” copy in my Amazon account, than to just buy the MP3 album in the first place.  Three dollars isn’t enough to make a tremendous difference in my lifestyle, but at the same time, that’s 1/3 the cost of the CD + MP3 album.  I can’t imagine why I would want to pay $3 more for the MP3 album when I could save $3, get the CD and MP3 album, and give or throw away the CD.

    Interestingly, now that the United States Supreme Court has upheld the “First Sale Doctrine,” at least in relation to international textbook sales, I wonder if I’m perfectly justified in buying the CD+MP3 for $9 and selling off the CD for a modest amount.  (Are there still used CD buying places?!?)  After all, it’s not as if I’m making unauthorized digital copies, I’m just selling the physical CD and keeping the digital copies I purchased… right?

    WordPress II

    I tend to see the world through WordPress eyes.1 When I find (or write) a clever bit of script that would be useful to a WordPress website, I tend to convert it into a WordPress plugin.  I did this with my PieChart Plugin and a few other knick-knacky plugins.

    I just noticed Cryozap Cyrozap‘s Amazon affiliate link converter PHP script.

    It occurs to me that it would be relatively easy to build a WordPress plugin that searches through a post/page, finds Amazon links, and then turns them into affiliate links…  I think this could be useful in several of my sites, actually.

    Update:  Cyrozap – sory fore mispellnig yoru mane.

    1. You see, the subject is WordPress double-I, as in WordPress I’s, as in WordPress eyes… [↩]