cl.gif - Changing Outer Display - (V3) - Very Detailed

[JokerSixTNine]

I just wanted to write something to help bring something to the community, I'm newer here, but I went through a lot of the issues when dealing with cl.gif and getting it working, and I want to share how I overcame them, as I have noticed that information on it can be mixed opinions, and some assumptions out there, I just wanted to give a summary of the things that I ran into, and how I dealt with them, in order to try and help others running into the same situations, this assumes you know how to connect to P2KTools and have drivers and stuff installed, you will also need XVI32 for editing seems:

Outer LCD Default Text:
Some phone providers will use a text file that displays text on the outer screen instead of an image, we'll discuss this...

Changing the Outer LCD Default Text:
Connect to P2KTools (I'm using 0.8.6 build 406). Select the menu item Tools, and select External LCD. Press the READ button to read the current settings from your phone. Make the checkbox enable external LCD text when flip is open: checked. Type in whatever you want the external screen to say, and select WRITE.
Restart Phone.
Your updated text should now show.

Removing the Outer LCD Default Text:
Connect to P2KTools. Select the menu item Tools, and select External LCD. Press the READ button to read the current settings from your phone. Make the checkbox enable external LCD text when flip is open: unchecked. Select WRITE.
Restart phone.
The default Motorola logo should now display.


Changing The Default Motorola Image:
Connect to P2KTools. Select Seem Editor from the navigation panel. In the 'Seem:' section, enter these values:
Num: 004a
Rec: 0001
Select Load from Phone. Select Save to File. Create a folder called Backup, and save a copy of the seem there, leave the name as it's default. Save another copy of the file somewhere else, this is the one you will modify, again, keep the name of the file as the default while saving.
You will need to also create backups, of the seems:
Num: 0061
Rec: 0001
And...
Num:0062
Rec: 0001
Open XVI32 to edit the seems. In the menu items, select File and Open. Open your non-backup seem of 004a-0001.seem. In this program, you will notice an area in the very bottom left corner which will show this Adr. hex: 0, this shows you your offset. In the left XVI32 panel, we want to select Adr. hex: 27 (offset 27). In the left panel, with offset 27 selected, press 00, to change the value of this offset to 00 (it was most likely set to 02, or 01 beforehand). Here is what the different values do:
00 - Shows the image in the file path which is displayed in seems 0061/0062, usually referred to as a custom cl.gif file.
01 - Shows the text in the seems 0061/0062. (If the file path for your custom cl.gif is in those seems, it will shows the path to that image on your outer screen. Also, when you change the text on your external LCD screen from the steps above, the values are written to these seems, so you could also change the outer text in this manner, however the above mentioned way is much easier and quicker)
02 - Shows the default Motorola image.
Select File Save to overwrite the 004a-0001.seem file.
Select File Open and open 0061-0001.seem. The values for this are as follows this is what should be entered in the left side of XVI32 (they are in the format of offset - value), :
0 - 00
1 - 2F
2 - 00
3 - 61
4 - 00
5 - 2F
6 - 00
7 - 6D
8 - 00
9 - 6F
A - 00
B - 62
C - 00
D - 69
E - 00
F - 6C
10 - 00
11 - 65
12 - 00
13 - 2F
14 - 00
15 - 73
16 - 00
17 - 79
18 - 00
19 - 73
1A - 00
1B - 74
1C - 00
1D - 65
1E - 00
1F - 6D
20 - 00
21 - 2F
22 - 00
23 - 63
24 - 00
25 - 6C
26 - 00
27 - 2E
28 - 00
29 - 67
2A - 00
2B - 69
2C - 00
2D - 66
2E - 00
2F - 00
The right side of XVI32 will look like this, after all values are properly in place:
[]/[]a[]/[]m[]o[]b[]i[]l[]e[]/[]s[]y[]s[]t[]e[]m[]/[]c[]l[].[]g[]i[]f[][]
Select File Save to overwrite the 0061-0001.seem file. Now, the seem 0062-0001.seem should be identical to 0061-0001.seem. The best way to do this I found, was to just copy 0061-0001.seem in Windows, and paste a new copy of it, and then rename that file to 0062-0001.seem.
Now, the image that you want on your outer display must have the dimensions 96 x 80. Use P2KTools to upload this file to your phone in the directory /a/mobile/system/. The file must be called cl.gif, make sure that it is in all lower case when naming the file as well.
Now, open the Seem Editor area of P2KTools, and in the Seem area, type in:
Num: 004a
Rec: 0001
Select Load From File. Select the modified 004a-0001.seem that you had saved. Then select Save to Phone.
In the Seem area, type in:
Num: 0061
Rec: 0001
Select Load From File. Select the modified 0061-0001.seem that you had saved. Then select Save to Phone.
in the Seem area, type in:
Num: 0062
Rec: 0001
Select Load From File. Select the modified 0062-0001.seem that you had saved. Then select Save to Phone.
Select Restart Phone.
Your image should now show.

[Paolo]

awesome writeup. a lot of people are confused about external display image and external display text... this will help clear it up

[JokerSixTNine]

yep, when I went through it there was a lot of confusing information, specifically on the values of seems 0061/0062 and the fact that you have to get rid of the outer text, before putting in the custom image

[steelman1]

Thanks so so much, i have been chasing on this mod for weeks, with your write up it was very very simple, I almost feel stupid for not being able to do this befor your step by step. I really want to Thank you and I am sure this will help allot of people looking for this mod!!

[over2land]

Awesome. Thanks.

Do you know of a way to get the caller ID to show on the outer LCD when in a call?

[JokerSixTNine]

Thanks so so much, i have been chasing on this mod for weeks, with your write up it was very very simple, I almost feel stupid for not being able to do this befor your step by step. I really want to Thank you and I am sure this will help allot of people looking for this mod!!

don't worry at all man , with the information that was out there, it took me a while to get it all figured out, but I figured since I had, I might as well make it as easy as I can for anyone else, and tried to cover all of the issues I ran into, and any issues I could see being ran into, it's not that simple to do with the information out there... I'm glad that it helped someone

[JokerSixTNine]

Awesome. Thanks.

Do you know of a way to get the caller ID to show on the outer LCD when in a call?

I think that's actually something that you need to talk to your phone provider about, I heard something about that

[ten7ryder]

thank you for this VERY detailed writeup

[nabeed]

nice guide..i just overwrite my cl.gif file in p2kcommander and it works fine :-D

[element27]

COOL!!! Nice walkthrough JokerSixTNine... Now my v3i looks amazing. I'm with Rogers and the phone came stock with just a blank white screen when the flip was open, that was the only thing that ruined the look of the phone for me but no more!!!

Later all,
Ed.

[JokerSixTNine]

I'm glad that I've gotten such positive feedback on this... maybe I'll make as detailed of a walkthrough on the other mods I've done as well

[Griever92]

Thanks, great walkthrough, my V3i looks awesome now, but one question.

Is it possible to do this with the external screen while the flip is Closed as well?

[Paolo]

COOL!!! Nice walkthrough JokerSixTNine... Now my v3i looks amazing. I'm with Rogers and the phone came stock with just a blank white screen when the flip was open, that was the only thing that ruined the look of the phone for me but no more!!!

Later all,
Ed.

Same here. I dunno why it was a blank white box on mine too. Oh well, I modded it to a nice custom logo. BTW, to the op, one thing you should add is when uploading the cl.gif file back, make sure to set it back to system. i dunno why its necessary but the old file had that property before so u might as well do the same to the new one right? just incase.

[mikeham]

hm i tried and upon opening teh first seem with XVI32 the bottom-left does NOT show hex 0, adn i can find no hex 27.... so i guess i'm out of luck. :<

[pinto505]

I just got a white screen but now everthing is messed up i can't get my phone back to the way I had it.