Help - Toshiba SD-M1612 Firmware revision 1002.

[radix2k]

Hello.
Yesterday I've bought the Toshiba DVD SD-M1612. DVD Info tool reported this drive to be region locked with the firmware release 1002. I've read a few readme's for the freshmen about the DVD (no previous expierience about it). So I went to the firmware page
(http://www.firmware.fr.st/), and saw for the same chip firmware region free firmware releases 1004 & 1806, but not for the 1002. So I've found the other site which mentioned that firmware 1002 is revC and there's no region free solution for this revision yet.
So taking all in mind said above the question is:

1 Is there available region free firmware for Toshiba SD-M1612 revision 1002?

2 Taking in mind that 1st question is false, I guess that other firmware releases doesn't fit to my drive (1004 & 1806), am I right?

3 If 2nd question is true - could you write me the links to the firmware hacking site? I would like to try to hack it by myself. I could not find the information for the hacking :
a) how to extract the firmware from the DVD and store in hex file. Are there any tools?
b) Also could you tell which processor is used in this toshiba drive and give the link to the site containing assembly language set of this CPU.
c) any guide about hacking the firmware would be a very big help for me as a starter.

I would really appreciate your help.
Thanks.

[pintoca]

I have an idea that might be worth trying...

Hello there, I have the same drive, with the same revision (rev C).

One thing I have been thinking about is flashing the drive to a previous original version, for example, getting the original firmware for rev A or rev B and flashing it to that state.

Once the drive is rev A or B, then you could theoretically apply the patch for any of these revisions.

I haven't tested this yet though, but if thre hardware is the same (which I believe it is) then there is no reason why it shouldn't work.

Anybody has tried this procedure with this or other drive?