baby's first UART root shell; the Technicolour DJA0231 (Gen2 Smart Modem)

recently i’ve been diving into the rather intimidating but endlessly fascinating world of hardware hacking, and after a few aliexpress orders and bad financial decisions, I now have some of the tools required to start to poke around under the physical and digital hoods of electronic devices. and why not start with my battle-tested, age-old Telstra Gen 2 “Smart Modem”? the white box that watched over me, my midnight queries, chats, and thoughts flowing through its gates by the thousands, millions over the years, as i grew from an anxious adolescent into… whatever the hell i am now.