[G1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] gcurr:
After looking through the varying questions concerning the same topic and, subsequently, not seeing the right answers - within the right timeframe (e.g. within the past month or so), I decided that a new thread was needed. So here's it is:

A branded G1 (mine, T-mobile, Germany) is what I want to downgrade so that it may be rooted and upgraded with a custom ROM. The problem, I am finding, is not that the instructions aren't correct. Rather, it's that a piece of the instruction set doesn't exist. Namely, the revskills.de website. I mention this because I have tried, repeatedly, to boot with the DREAIMG.nbh in order to downgrade and have consisitently (after numerous downloads from different sites) received the same error - 00028002 (or something like that) while trying to load it. I eventually learned that some phones needed a "goldcard" so I set about trying to do that. Got the CID, reversed it, etc. but the part about going to psas.revskills.de is the killer. The site is down and apparently, no other method of changing the carrier ID exists (or, if it does, the method is too ugly to mention, let alone comprehensible by someone like me, a not-so-good-programmer). Worse yet, all the instructions involving the generation of a goldcard also involve this website and consequently, because of the aforementioned down-status of the site, renders all instructions moot (Grade: D for relying on unreliable sources). So, back to the question: does a method exist outside of what I have mentioned? Where can I find it? Does it have a cost attached to it?

If you've read this far it means that full words and sentences don't confuse you (in light of so-called "l337sp33k") and I applaud you. I will applaud you even more when a well thought out and not-so-glib answer unriddled with blog cliches and platitudes can be found as a reply to this post...

Seriously, if you don't know an answer, a link to check out or someone I can refer to, don't waste your time (or mine) with a the standard "you need to read this and that rules before asking a question" reply. I have trolled through this forum and a few others for the past 2 days looking for the answers to the question of downgrading and finding not the right answers that are specific to this problem (yes, I've read thropugh cyanogenmod wiki, read through the wiki here for dream/g1 phones, gsm programmer's sites, android dedicated sites, etc...ALL of them point to revskills for the goldcard gen (except for one which allows dowloading a perl prog to compile yourself to make the goldcard - I'm not so good with perl yet)

If you need to check the website go here:

psas.revskills.de/?q=goldcard

it's not working for me, whether through proxies in the US, netherlands, britain, frnace, or germany. My only conclusion is that it has been shut down.

Thanks for you attention and I really appreciate some advice from one of you that may be able to shed more light on this.

Incidentally:

SD Card: Hama 2GB Micro SD(formatted fat32)

Droid/HTC G1 phone has been factory reset to:

Firmware: 1.6

Kernel: 2.6.29-00479-g3c7df37 android-build@apa26 #19

Baseband ver.: 62.50S.20.17U_2.22.19.26I

Build No.: DRC 92