Purchased from ATT online, never activated it and removed my SIM card before I sold it.

The guy I sold it to is now emailing me saying he was planning on unlocking it and is unable to do so because it is not activated and says he needs the SIM card that came with the phone to activate it. He does not have a contract or service with AT&T.

I dont want to give him my SIM card because that will link the phone to my account right? Is it possible to use Redsnow or something to activate the phone without the original SIM card?

Also, he told me he went to AT&T and they told him he needed to sign a contract to get a SIM. Couldn't he just get one of the gophones and use the SIM card out of that?

Thanks for the help.

Depends on what firmware it has,bootloader etc.
Give us more info on it

__________________
There's no patch for stupidity

I believe the firmware is 3.0.1, I'm not sure of the bootloader. Is there a quick way to find that out?

Thanks for the help.

There's no easy way to find out baseband without being activated.

I don't know why the previous response mentioned bootloader. The bootloader version is only important on 3G iPhones as bootloader version 5.8 allows baseband downgrades.

You either need to activate iPhone with legit AT&T sim - it does not have to be yours. Or jailbreak and hacktivate. If you chose to jailbreak I would recommend redsn0w if you are running 3.0.1

Because apple has stopped signing 3.0.1 and 3.0 you can't reinstall either of these firmware versions any more.

If this was truly never used and is running 3.0.1 you have the correct baseband for ultrasn0w and you should NEVER restore to 3.1or 3.1.2 using official apple firmware.

You can only restore with custom ipsw created using pwnagetool. This will prevent baseband being updated.

__________________
Please read the stickies and search the forum before posting!
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iPhone 3GS 32GB factory unlocked (3.1; Pwnagetool, Cydia, OpenSSH)
iPhone 8BG (3.1.2; Pwnagetool, Cydia, OpenSSH)

Thanks!

One last question. Can anyone recommend a good redsn0w step through for 3.0.1? My searches have found so many it's kind of overwhelming.

As mentioned on this forum many times, iclarified has great guides, I would syggest starting there when looking for guides on jailbreak and unlock.

redsn0w windows 3.0.x

__________________
Please read the stickies and search the forum before posting!
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iPhone 3GS 32GB factory unlocked (3.1; Pwnagetool, Cydia, OpenSSH)
iPhone 8BG (3.1.2; Pwnagetool, Cydia, OpenSSH)