Calling all successful Hardware Hackers... Tips please!

Could any people who have successfully Hardware hacked their iPhone please post tips so as to help others do it.

I would say the two hardest steps and the most in need of advice are bridging the contacts and opening the phone, although the software can be tricky for a novice.

I will start off with my advice!

DON'T SOLDER! It is far to intricate and you are bound to mess it up unless you design and build nanobots for a living.

When using the needle method (this is the way I did it) make sure to scrape the A17 trace (the little wire you need to touch) until you can see silver. I didn't do that for ages and kept wondering why iEraser kept hanging!

Keep them tips coming! The more the better so people can be confident they can unlock their iPhones too...:)

This one is obvious to linux/mac users, but maybe not so much to windows users:

You need to "chmod u+x file" every single file you need to execute, before its executed.

Like it... Keep em coming!

I thought of a couple of software based things.

1) Don't press loads of keys thinking Minicom has hung when it doesn't start straight away. type "mincom -s"<enter> and be patient.
You will just confuse yourself if you hit enter and it starts in a random menu!
Also if you do the "save as dfl" option and get an error, you have created your "etc" dir in the wrong place!

2) When bridging the 1.8v and the A17 Trace, get a second person to run iUnlocker rather than typing with your big toe as I did. You will only have to hold the bridge for a couple of seconds so don't panic. If it doesn't work first time keep trying! It took a few trys for me. If it says something about connect test point you haven't done it keep trying. It is obvious when it has worked!

load the "ICE03.14.08_G.fls" into the usr/bin at any point before you start ieraser incase you have to reset and lose WiFi this will save you about 30 mins of restoring.

touch the needle to the trace before the 1.8v unless you like hanging the system and starting all over again

Install Mobile Terminal after the BSD subsystem

Use Fugu for Mac instead of fetch

Do not underestimate the power of better tools, forget about using one needle or a paperclip or a set of tweezers, make the needle tool, and use a real magnifying glass with a light built in

Activation will fail using INdependence, you have to return the phone to jail and then activate then jailbreak again

take the sim card tray out while opening the case, obviously, but you need it to jailbreak and activate, then take it out again.

ctrl c quits out of a command in terminal, so if your nor dumper hangs like mine did, you can do it again. you can use the sftp client to check the size of the dump.bin, which for me was still 0 bytes after 50 mins of dumping, i knew it had hung so i ctrl c'd and did it again and it worked.

good luck