[CALUG] Bricked Phone - Need Windows Box For 15 Minutes

[Bryan J Smith]

On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 9:40 PM, Shawn Webb <lattera at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the responses, everyone. TL;DR: I actually installed Win8.1 on
> the old laptop I bought at Defcon last year and got my phone working with
> it. I'm surprised to see Win8.1 actually works on that underpowered thing.

Windows Vista, 7 and 8/8.1 are actually all the same OS, NT6.  Only
the video drivers might need to be modified, but most everything else
will work if it works on Vista.  It's looking like Windows 9 will also
be NT6 as well.

> What you can learn from my mistake: don't try flashing firmware of a
> physical device from inside a VM.
> ...
> Long-winded version:
> ... It appears that Odin relies on precise USB timings that not even
> VMWare Fusion can provide.

Actually, don't get me started on HyperVisors and alleged
"performance."  There are a lot of incorrect assumptions out there.
This is especially the case when Linux is the host OS.  Again, don't
get me started, but remember that EMC/VMware doesn't allow direct
benchmarking comparisons.  So only a few "generic, industry-standard
benchmarks" that IHVs have run for their marketing can point some in
the correct direction and, again, especially when Linux is the host
OS.  ;)

But that all aside ...

With _any_ HyperVisor ... I was going to suggest it was a disconnect.
Remember, the host might have some connect/disconnect aspects as the
device is updated, disconnected, reconnected, rebooted, etc...  That
doesn't always get "passed through," especially at all-important
times.  So beware when doing this, especially under Linux, especially
with add-on HyperVisors.  ;)

-- bjs