Bypass MD-380 Programming Password

Last week, I got an email from a fellow ham who encountered a weird problem with his TYT / Tytera MD-380G DMR radio (the new one with GPS).
He tried to flash his codeplug for the first time but something went wrong and the CPS prompted for programming password.

A small peek on the md380tools github page gave me the information I needed.

The Ubuntu Issue

I’ve Ubuntu 14.04 running on VirtualBox so downloaded it and tried but it failed, probably due to incompatibility of md380tools with Ubuntu 14.

So I had to upgrade to 16.04 but a small popup message informed me that I don’t have enough space. 🙄

After struggling with converting a fixed size VDI to dynamic and partitioning it all over (because of SWAP) I finally got it to work.
But, I couldn’t login. AGAIN?

In the end, I had to delete a file and install some stuff to get to the desktop.

The solution

I installed all the required packages as stated in the github page then I entered the md380tools directory in the terminal.

I found this: http://www.iz2uuf.net/wp/index.php/2016/06/12/md-380-how-to-reset-the-pc-programming-password/ but it didn’t work for me due to permission error on the DD command, I didn’t have time to check why, so I did it like this:

What you need?

Some working Linux dist, take a look on the github page and install the tools. You’ll also need a second radio to read the firmware from it.

The steps:

1. We need to read the firmware from other MD380 so connect a working radio with passwordless codeplug and type:
   ./md380-dfu read file.img
2. Next, connect your password protected radio and type:
   ./md380-dfu write file.img
3. Now go to your CPS and flash a working codeplug.

73!