Ok, so I wanted to make my drive region free so I could play all those cheap DVDs I got off ebay without having to decode each one. I won't go into the steps of making a DVD drive region free, since there are so many out there ( see http://server4.doom9.org/index.html?/rpc1.htm if you don't know how).
These guides are good if you don't have the latest firmware installed on your drive, but what if you do?
I had a Pioneer DVR-216 drive running 1.09 firmware--the latest (as of the time of writing). Trying to run patched firmware (http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php) only gave me the error: FW is already the latest
Because the patched firmware was the same version it wouldn't allow me to re-run the firmware update. So, with a simple hack we just need to trick the updater into thinking we're installing a later version of the firmware:
1.Get yourself a copy of CDVDInfo if you haven't already. We want to see if our process works.
2.Download the latest firmware for your drive (official or from rpc1.org, we're going to crack it anyway.
3.Run the firmware upgrade and take note where it extracts to (it should fail with the "FW is already the latest error") By default mine went to: C:\DVR216\FW109EU
4.In the extracted directory you should have two files, an .exe and a file named something like S0015001.109
5.Edit the S0015001.109 file with something like Notepad++ and go to about line 4 where it has the revision level. Change the revision level to something higher, eg. mine was 1.09 I changed it to 1.10 Save the file.
6.If your firmware isn't the region-free copy, download MediaCodeSpeedEdit (http://ala42.cdfreaks.com/MCSE/)
7.In MediaCodeSpeedEdit, load the firmware file we edited above, from the bottom right, check "RPC1 Patch" . Save the firmware.
8.Back in the extracted firmware directory, run the .exe file to upgrade your firmware. You should be prompted if you wish to upgrade your firmware from 1.09 to 1.10 (or whatever version no. you changed the file to).
9.Run the CDVDInfo tool, you should receive a "No Lock Detected" message.
10.(Remember that you still need to run something like dvd43 to get your OS to accept DVDs from multiple regions)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment