Crossflashing and Region Free Firmware

[Chewy]

Having the firmware available is often just the first step to making a drive work?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Is that a statement or a question?!

Region Free firmware is technically breaking a form of copy protection so I'm not sure if the site will have much/anything to do with it.

As for cross-flashing, yeah that's a route some people could benefit from taking but the vast majority would do well to just perform any sort of firmware update!

With the search function on rpc1.org no longer in action, this site has been created to fill the gap in the market (as well as getting the search from within ImgBurn working again!).

[Chewy]

Is that a statement or a question?!

Both

Region Free firmware is technically breaking a form of copy protection so I'm not sure if the site will have much/anything to do with it.

admin might clarify but last I remember region protection was not protected

As for cross-flashing, yeah that's a route some people could benefit from taking but the vast majority would do well to just perform any sort of firmware update!

yes and such crossflashes seem to be getting rarer as drives evolve but not sure about the pioneer family

[admin]

In Australia it is legal to sell region-free hardware, or to modify existing hardware to be region-free. There are new legislations though, copied from the US DMCA, and it's a bit hard to say what's allowed anymore. In any case, the servers hosting the site is in the US, and so the US DMCA may apply, I'm not sure. But talking about it is okay for sure.

From a non DMCA perspective, the firmware files are created and owned by the drive manufacturers, and if they wanted to go after people, they can easily use classic copyright laws to do so, as you are taking their "work" and modifying it without their approval.

Are there still lots of region-free firmware for the latest drives being released, or are people using software solutions these days, I'm not sure. Some Blu-ray drives don't even come with hardware BD region locking these days, not to mention many BD movies are region-free to begin with (a larger majority? Warner, Paramount, Universal, older Sony, Disney titles, should all be region-free).

[Abuilder]

LUK

As for cross-flashing, yeah that's a route some people could benefit from taking but the vast majority would do well to just perform any sort of firmware update!

True and not true. I have an Ativa™ 20x Internal DVD±RW Drive With LightScribe the model of this drive is DH-3H20A. Trying to find a firmware update for this drive is like grrrrrr
Having messed with as many drives as I have I opened it up and Bingo! Hell this thing is a Lite-On. A lite-On DH20A3H to be exact. I crossed-flashed it with Lite-On’s own flash utility firmware ver: YY11 and it worked just fine but I didn’t like the extremely high spindle speed so I backtracked it to the lite-On firmware YP5W. Now it doesn’t spin so fast when reading scratched CD&DVD’s
This is the original origin of drive:

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/198098/Ativa-20x-Internal-DVD-RW-Drive/

Cross-flashing & region free firmware is still alive and well. It's just a little harder to find them as you already know

[cynthia]

Trying to find a firmware update for this drive is like grrrrrr

From the Ativa homepage.

How to upgrade firmware?

Visit LITE-ON IT's official website to see if there is any new firmware available for you model. And be sure to match the model number exactly as firmware for different models are NOT interchangeable. When confirmed, please download the firmware file in "XXXXX.zip" format to your hard-drive. For upgrade utility for Windows environment, once downloaded, extract the content of the zip file to a location you can find later, go to the location where you just stored the file for upgrade. Execute the file that will automatically upgrade your CD-RW drive and wait for the program to confirm the operation is successful. After completion, please reboot your PC again. Please double check the firmware version from the "Device Manager".

http://www.ativaproducts.com/downloa...drive_faqs.xls

I wouldn't call that a true cross flash.

[doctorhardware]

I have a Samsung SH-S162L DVD drive, I found a region free firmware and flashed the drive with S162L.TS08.patched-rpc1. I looked at what region that the drive was set to after flashing to the patched firmware. It was set to none, but I had only 2 region changes left. I have never played around with changing the drive to the different regions. Shouldn't there be 4 region changes left, like the Pioneer drive that I have.

[Abuilder]

cynthia
I was given this drive well over a year ago. At the time all the information that I could find on it was on officedepot’s main site with no links to any FAQ’s. Heck there was only one thread on Cdfreaks about an 18X version of this drive and nobody was really sure what an Ativa was. The model numbers between Lite-On and the rebadged Ativa are close but not exact. Just like if you take a Lite-On DH20A3P and flash it to a DH20A3H you are asking for problems because one it a lightscribe drive and the other isn’t.
A true cross-flash?
Most SONY label drive are not make by them the only difference in the hardware is the plastic bezel and the small mod in the firmware to make it look like SONY made the drive. And the price of course.

[cynthia]

@ Abuilder

For me a 'true crossflash' is when you can say goodbye to any warranties if the crossflash goes wrong. If this Ativa 'crossflash' goes wrong - you should still be able to get a new writer from them.

[Chewy]

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f92/hp-640c-benq-1625-media-compatibility-139016/#post1030275

a crossflash takes a special firmware and flasher

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showpost.php?p=570752&postcount=6

this would be the standard flash for that old drive

[cynthia]

There is a function for 'cloned' drivers. So I've now added Ativa in the database.

http://www.firmwarehq.com/Ativa/drives.html

[Abuilder]

@ Abuilder

For me a 'true crossflash' is when you can say goodbye to any warranties if the crossflash goes wrong. If this Ativa 'crossflash' goes wrong - you should still be able to get a new writer from them.

Cynthia
It would have been really hard for me to void the warranty on this drive because I never got one. J. It was given to me by a local vender/DVD custom tower builder that refused to put the thing in any of his machines. LOL
Well maybe not a true crossflash but I have put a couple of CodeKing’s patched firmware on it. I’m still not real happy with this drive so if I fry it I won’t be heartbroken.

[cynthia]

Then you got it cheap.

I have the original Lite-On version of that writer and I think it's a nice writer (except the PMA update failures). I have the YY11 firmware installed.

[gonwk]

Hi Cynthia,

I went to "Firmware HQ" but I did not see my Gateway M-6862 Silver laptop DVD drive ... it is "Optiarc DVD RW AD-7563A WX05" according to Nero DiscSpeed 5.

Do you know if my Firmware "WX05" is the latest!?!? And I think Optiarc is owned by Sony ... right?

Thanks,

G!

[doctorhardware]

Gonwk yes it is I just bought a internal drive that is Sony/Optiarc.