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| info |
| valuable information for my visitorsRasInTask
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| introduction |
| I am a big fan of the DVD technology: I currentely have about 30 disks from which
about one half is region code 1 and the other half is code 2. Since the begining,
I was using my PC to play the discs and where my first drive was simply RPC1 protected,
all the drives following it were RPC2 and I had to look for a new firmware for the
drives.
Now, I bought myself an IBM Thinkpad T21 with a nice DVD-Drive in it's bay and I
wanted to crack it too, not to replace my desktop PC as the primary equipement for
watching DVDs (my Notebook does not have the cool digital audio output for my
AC3-Reciever), but just for fun and because I will possibly run into the situation where
I don't have my PC at hand but have to show one of my disks.
This tutorial will not only show you how to install a new firmware but will also show
you how to do it when using Windows 2000 only with an NTFS-Partition and with the limitation
to only have either the floppy-drive or the DVD-ROM installed.
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| Warning |
| I am not sure whether patching the firmware (and the DVD-Player-Software) is legal in your country.
I am not even sure wheter it is here in Switzerland. So: If it is not: Please don't run to your
lawyer but send me a short email and I will remove this
page.
Another warning: If you download the wrong firmware for the wrong drive, or you lose power while
flashing it (should not be that problem when using a notebook...), your drive will die and
there is no way to get it back to work. So please be careful.
Of course I cannot take any responsibility for what you do with your drive.
One more warning: I've just received an email of an user following my little tutorial here
without ever having played a dvd on the drive. If you patch the firmware in this state, your
drive will not be able to play any region protected disc any more! Before patching,
you should set the region of your drive either by simply playing a disc or by using the
device-manager of your windows. If you are too stuck with this problem, download the
original firmware here and flash the drive to get back the
RCP-II protection, watch some movie and restart this tutorial.
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| Getting the firmware |
| This is an easy step, if a cracked firmware really exists. Just open the Device-Manager
of your Windows-Box, right-click on your drive and select "properties". The name you see there,
you use in a query to Google, together with the keywords
"dvd region firmware". This should lead you to the right pages.
If you are using an IBM Thinkpad T21 with the drive SR-8175 and a firmware-version of G228,
you can use this firmware and don't have to search with google.
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| preparing to flash... |
| To flash your new firmware, you will have to boot into plain old DOS. For me, this was a bit tricky:
As I said, I am using a Notebook with only one drive-bay and with Windows 2000 installed on one
of two NTFS-Partitions. My Problem: To get to plain DOS, I had to use a boot-disk, but after having
booted, I would have had to plug my DVD-Drive which is not hot-swap capable in DOS-Mode... You see
my Problem.
Without any 3rd party tools or hardware, you are stuck here :-( All the workarounds that come
to my mind require some additional stuff:
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Use Partiton Magic to create a small, primary(!!)
FAT-Parition and make it active. Boot from the disk and make your C-drive (the FAT-Partition)
bootable (with the sys-command and copy the DVD-Firmware and flash-program to it.
Then remove your floppy (and the drive) and boot from this FAT-Parition (this is why you had
to make it active). Then flash the drive, turn off your computer and reboot with your boot-disk
on which hopefully fdisk is installed. Run it, say "n" to the large-drive-support,
say "y" to the NTFS-Warning, say "2" for changing the active partition and then say "1" for your
primary NTFS-Parition. Exit and reboot. Your Windows 2000 should come up again.
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Create a bootable CD-ROM and copy the Flash-Tool and the firmware onto the image. This way
will most likely not work because you cannot flash the drive you are working on :-(
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Put your Windows 2000 away and reinstall Windows 98 which actually is not an alternative ;-).
Then you can boot into the DOS-Mode with the DVD-drive connected.
Whatever you do: You should have an empty DVD-Drive connected, you should be in plain old DOS
and you should have access to the flash-program and the firmware-image. If all these conditions
are met, you can continue.
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| flashing |
| Just act like described in the README-File of the Firmware-Archive. If you are using an
IBM Thinkpad, notice that your DVD-Drive is connected as Secondary Master. You you can flash
your drive with
C:\>dwl2 2 x228.bin
Now read the warning and proceed. When the tool has finished, you should turn off your computer.
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| the software |
| Now after your drive is a simple, RCP1 protected one, you have to look into the software.
Since I used PowerDVD as my player, I could use DVD Genie
to do everything I needed: Just run the Tool, select "PowerDVD" and the region code you want to
set the drive to.
It seems like you can ignore the Windows-region-code that can be set in the device-manager for now.
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| proof of concept |
I took this screenshot after my first reboot when the flash-process was finished. Unfortunately,
I have not made one before, so I cannot show you this "before -> after" stuff. Believe me: It worked.
That night, I watched "Urban legend" which I had in code2 and "Star Trek: Insurrection" which happens
to be code1. I did this on the same drive, with the same player-software and without any counter
flowing down and without any error-messages.
have fun!
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