The Firmware Page

Thanks to Laoran's outstanding work, we should finaly have a dumbproof automated version of the UJDA 7xx RPC-1 autopatcher

The file can be downloaded here:
http://www.rpc1.org/matshita/mpatch.exe

Instructions:
- Download file,
- Run the executable in windows (this will create a bootable floppy),
- Reboot your laptop with the floppy in the drive (you might want to check that your BIOS is set to boot from the floppy),
- Leave the floppy do the patching or select a non automated mode.

A bootable CD image for those who have a swap bay will follow soon. Those who can't wait can already have a look here

Laoran's workaround should fix the infamous freezout issue, so nothing should prevent UJDA 7xx users to turn their drive to a region free Combo.
Please confirm whether things work out as expected or not.

The naming convention of the fimware dump is 'ABC_123$.7xx' where:
- ABC is the OEM manufacturer (can be 2 or 3 letters)
- 123 is the revision (1.23)
- '$' indicates the IDE Master/Slave position (M or S)
- 7xx is the drive type

Now you can begin sending your dumps (using the dump option) to Arzeno, after having checked whether your firmware is already available on the site (Yes, he will uplaod them soon )

Once again, big THANKS to Laoran for the fix

Congratulations NIL! (and Laoran), for solving the freezout problem, but what about all of those (including me) who still have some problems executing mpatch? the infamous:

Is there any chance to fix that problem also?

Regards,
WatersCL

ps: Strange thing that "idediag" recognizes my drive, an UJDA 740, and mpatch does not

Til >Nil: and Laoran.

This is the best utility I think I have ever used, and it really got me out of trouble with my region locked UJDA720 drive (which was locked on the wrong region). Well done on your continual efforts >Nil: and not giving up on us. I also benefitted greatly with your A05 flash so many many thanks for that one too!!!

Long Live your amazing efforts. Take satisfaction and keep up the good work.

Hazza..

PS - By the way the autopatcher worked perfectly first time in auto mode. No lockups no nonsense.

Thanks for the reports people!



Well, now that the freezout plague seems to be off my back, I might start to look into these subsidiary issues.
However, not having a machine to test the problem with will not make it easy. Also, I'm very busy at the moment (but that's usual anyway... )
I have no doubt that idediag's code some extra way to recognise a drive compared to what I do (I mostly re-use somebody else's code).
The best I can say is: "I'll see what I can do"

Hi everyone. Grats everyone who has been working on the freezeout problem.

Can't wait till we get the fix's for the 740 60 odd% stopping problem.

Thank you everyone for all your effort on this one.

Hi Groupl
I ran the fixed autopatcher and all seems to be well!....I'm impressed with with the efforts of all involved!
My UJDA-730 drive was given (It was locked to Region 1) 2 changes, so I set it to region 4 (Australia)..DISCinfo says it has no locks detected yet the properties in Device Manager also gives 1 change!
Which one do I believe?......I'm using DVD Region Free to watch any other regions outside of Region 4, just in case!
Would changing to another region lock the drive again?
Cheers for all efforts!
Bopman

Hi Bopman,
Just have a look at both threads :
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=239 and http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=13869
Also to confirm : if your drive has been flashed and is now RPC-1, it can not become RPC-2 = region protected again, as long as you don't flash it again with the old firmware.

If you have other questions, maybe they are answered in the 'firmware flashing help' forum (forums link is at the top right of this page).

Hi!
I tried using the new fixed routine to see if it'd work with the Matshita UJDA 740 in my Dell laptop.
Unfortunately, the phone rang during restart (!), so the utility happily ran and flashed the firmware, but failed the check at 68%.
I cannot locate the changes.log - is this written to disk? I can't see it?
Therefore, my drive is a little dead at present! It recognised itself in Windows, but the eject button does not work, and if ejected manually it will not read from CD.
Is there the original firmware out there - due to the interruption whilst flashing, I could not dump mine to floppy.
I tried the upgrade to the Dell firmware available at rpc1.com, but as I'd already used this, it now says that it's already applied.
Any assistance in my stuff up will be greatfully appreciated!

Cheers all,
Sam

What the hell does a phone ringing have to do with a laptop in DOS mode??? Even if your PC is plugged to the phone, the phone ringing shouldn't interract with the computer in any way...


Nope, but that's something we should add for the floppy version, as well as the filename of the firmware file generated by mpatch (Unless 2 firmwares generated using the same options of mpatch have the exact same name, don't even bother try to flash one over the other, unless you want to mess up your drive. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED)



Unless you write it yourself, it is lost after reboot. But you should not focus on this file when the flashing went bananas, coz all this file can do when uses with mpatch is restore a working RPC-1 drive to a working RPC-2 version. It CAN NOT not correct eject button mishap. To do that you will need someone with the same drive as yours to send you his firmware and pray that the check failed at 68% does not mean that you have a hardware problem with your flash rom.



Therefore your drive is not dead at all, and there is good hope you can restore it provided you get a working firmware.
Can you try running mpatch again (but not drvloadc) and give us the name of the dumped file?

.
Take my word for it: That's a bad idea!
I repeat DON'T GO FLASHING UJDA FIRMWARES THAT WERE NOT DESIGNED FOR YOUR DRIVE OR THAT HAVE A DIFFERENT REVISION FROM THE ONE YOU HAVE. Or if you do, don't ask for support here...

Update to this post:
I have just ejected and replaced the disk module from its bay whilst the computer was running, and the eject / reading problems have now solved themselves.
Also running DriveInfo v2.2 shows the old firmware (MATSHITA CDRW/DVD UJDA740 1.03), and not what is had before after mpatch.
The region protection is still there (obviously), but it appears to at least do what it did before!
I'd still be happy to give flashing a go, but maybe I hold fire a little longer and understand more about how to do it, and the issues involved! I flashed my other laptop DVD with no problem a while back, so was a bit over confident that this would work as well...



It meant I wasn't watching what was going on, so therefore it ran through the procedure automagically and meant I did not have chance to choose the dump to floppy option in the menu.



Before I do anything really dumb (again!) can you let me know exactly how to do this?

Use the floppy, select manual, and run mpatch.exe?

Aha! Then your 68% thingy is normal (the eject button issue is not).
You're not the only one to report the check failing after 60%, and this is simply due to the fact that, since Matshita and their OEM's never published any 740 firmware, we have no idea how big this firmware is, so we dump and reflash more than we should (which should be of little consequence as the extra content should go to RAM).

One day I will need to update what mpatch does for the 730/740. In the meantime, the check failure shouldn't be of much consequence. A few people have been using the autopatcher like that, and they generally managed to get the expected results despite the check message.



You won't see ANY revision change before and after mpatch.
The ONLY change you should be able to see is the region protection.
Does DriveInfo report that your drive has region protection.
If not, then everything is fine. If it does, then try CDVDInfo.

I'm pretty sure that you flashed your drive to RPC-1 alright, and that, apart from that eject thing, everything happened pretty much as expected.
And don't forget that flashing your drive is only HALF the solution to get your drive region free. You need to defeat the OS/player protection as well. Please have a look on this forum to know how to do that.

,
I know others had reported this - I read the forum quite a bit, but it's good to know why! I wasn't sure, as many of the other posts said around 60%, and as mine was 68%, I thought that could be something more ominous.



Well, I did! Honest! I forget what it said, 'cos I didn't write it down, but it had two 3 letter acronyms after the drive name.



DriveInfo says: THIS DRIVE HAS REGION PROTECTION
CDVDInfo says: Drive Region Locked: Yes
So it looks like I'm still RPC2.

Yup - noted about everything regarding software protection...

Any suggestions on running this thing through again - how do I backup my current firmware in case all goes horrible? Dump to disk as the second option in the menu? Or just cut my losses for now!?

Thanks for all this BTW!

NIL: : about what did Samcl (and he will sure not be the only one), it must be necessary to add this echo line like :
echo TO DO NOW !!! BEFORE REBOOTING YOUR COMPUTER !!!
echo !!IMPORTANT!! PLEASE DO A BACKUP OF THE 'CHANGES.LOG' FILE CREATED BY MPATCH
echo You can either...

Samcl, first thing, to stop worrying , make a dump of your firmware (option 2)). That the first thing I did, I know it takes some time, but then I was no more anxious .

I'm quite sure you used ctrl+alt+sup at the end of flashing. You have to really turn off your computer at the end of flashing (it's true for nearly all flashing programs, not just ujda). That's why you had strange problems with your drive.
For the version : int his thread 'http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=10715&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=125', tohozo has written down the copy of the screen flash did. There is a difference between file and drive models (I had one difference also but my drive works cool and RPC-1), but not difference between versions.
Third point : you have a ujda 740. Toyozo had a 745. In both case, you report your drive is still RPC-2. Is it a limit of the patch ? It works well for ujda 730, maybe matshita complicated the RPC-2 scheme (don't they have other things to work on ?).

Anyway make a dump of your firmware. And send it to Arzeno ! Else you will remain the only one with the source of your firmware...

Ok - will do that - then I might try running the whole lot through again...

Cheers

Nil (& Laoran) - Well what can I say? You are DEFINITELY the man!!! Tried the 'Dumbproof' autopatcher (very much needed for us 'dumb' ones who do not really understand DOS!) and it worked flawlessly, a stark contrast to the first version. I know you have been hounded mercilessly by us 'UJDA' owners, and I would like to say a big THANX for your patience and efforts to make life enjoyably 'Region-free' for us! I can now watch my R1's without having to argue with the kids over the DVD player, and that alone is a blessing, I can tell you! Thanks again and keep up the good work. Regards, bzz.

Hi Guys,
As a newbie to flashing combo drives, I'm a bit confused. In the download section for firmware, a search turns up the statement that there is no RPC1 firmware yet available for the UJDA740 fitted to a Dell (I have an Inspiron 500). However, from reading your post here I get the impression that your auto patcher will patch to RPC1 - but don't I need the firmware file as well??
Would very much appreciate some advice on this.
Many thanks in advance - keep up the great work!
Cheers, Davyboy

The short answer is that there is no UJDA firmware to download because you already have the 'correct' firmware.

The longer answer is that the UJDA series all seem to use unique firmwares depending on the exact model AND the notebook in which they're installed. If you install the wrong FW then it can make your UJDA inaccessable, sometimes even losing the ability to reflash the FW without a lot of difficulty.

What the autopatcher does is reads the FW in your particular UJDA to make a copy then it modifies the copy by changing the few bits in the file that control the RPC2/RPC1 behaviour. The next step writes your (slightly) modified FW back to the UJDA drive.

The problems up 'til now have been because of an unanticipated conflict occuring between making the modified FW & trying to write it to the disk.

Many thanks for this easy to understand answer. I'll go ahead and try to patch the drive. Will let you guys know if it works.
Cheers, Davyboy

Okay,

So what is the solution for those UJDA740 users who end up on the verify file where it stops around 60 - 70%? (Mine stopped at 69%.)

When I checked with DriveInfo, it says that I still have region protection even after I used mpatch. Can you get around this problem if you use the manual route? I used the auto mode first and ran into the same problem others have encountered.

By the way, has anyone with a UJDA740 gotten mpatch (autopatcher v1.12b) to work for them yet?

Thanks,

esevin

Hi,

just to say that I have applied the new patch to my Sony VAIO GR114MK laptop with a UJDA710 drive and it works great thanks.

I still have to use DVD Region Killer with WinDVD, but now I can play my DVDs from New Zealand and UK.

Well done >NIL and helpers!

WonderStuff

This can happen, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the patch went wrong.



Make sure that you are not using any region killing software like DVD Region Killer, etc... when you run DriveInfo. Drive info can be fooled.

Moreover, if mpatch was unable to patch your specific firmware, it would have warned you. What messages do you get when you re-run mpatch.
And could you please give the full report of mpatch's run. I can't do much of anything with partial information. I need to have the whole lot or nothing.



nope



Yes people did manage to get their UJDA 740 region free with mpatch 1.12 (and got the 69% thingy). In fact, pretty much of everybody who ran mpatch on an UJDA 740 got their drive patched.

Maybe you want to try to use CDVDInfo to check that your drive is still region protected?

Hi NIL!
I have an Acer 634LC laptop with UJDA720. I applied your patch last year, Nov. So I have now firmare 1.03 (this was the last one you have had at that moment). The drive seems to have no lock now, and it is on Secondary -Master, but there is one small problem (as I tried to find out on forum a while ago) :
- the POST initialization takes now about a minute (having the DVD-drive inserted in laptop mediabay) instead of 3 secs (with no CD-drive).
So that, seeing that there is a new release of MPATCH, I tried to patch again using MPatch v1.12b:
- I selected first menu-option (auto-patch) at booting from floppy;
- I saw "Reading firmare" 0%...100%;
- after reading has just finished-> Error P06; and a line below saying:
Could not patch firmware!
I show you here my changes.log that I got after this trying:
0002F813: E8 F6
0002F814: 03 F6
0002F952: E1 E2
0002F9BB: E9 EA

N.B. perhaps the patch v1.12b works only on original firmware, but unfortunately I do not have my original one anymore!
Hoping that the release 1.12b would fix also the problem with drive detecting at POST, How can I make it, please ?

Thank you in advance,

Hi Nil, Hi everyone.

My 740 failed at 69% and was still reported as RPC2. There was no errors before this stage. Have tried with every different version as it eas released and was same.

Just a bit of extra information. This is a Dell notebook that had the standard Dell problem, reporting one region change left but not changing. It was stuck on region 1. I downloaded the Dell updated firmware which has now allowed me to change back to region 2, but still RPC2. Have not dared to patch the drive since firmware update, due to many warnings in the previous threads. Is it worth having a go? is it just the Dell notebooks with this problem that do not update when failing at the 69%? would be interested in finding out

Nil,

Okay here are the details:

Set the Bios of this Dell C600 for the following boot order:

CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Diskette Drive
Internal HDD

The mpatch created disk loads fine.

1. Patch and Flash option (chosen)

Preparing the flashing tools... (loads fine)

Extracting the firmware tools... (loads fine)

mpatch v1.12
Compliant devices found
MatshitaCDRW/DVD UJDA7401.02202190KME13520249451 (Secondary Master)

Now reading firmware... (100% completed)

Firmware successfully patched! ; )

Writing scrambled file DLx103W.740 (100% completed)

MSCDEX Version 2.25
Copyright Microsoft
Drive D: = Driver MSCD001 unit 0

Please eject andy CD or DVD from your Drive now!

Press any key to continue...

ATAPI DVD-ROM & CD-R/RW Program Loader. Version 2.54

Now ROM Version is 1.03

File and Drive is not the same model name.
file model : UJDA740 DVD/CDRW , drive model : CDRW/DVD UJDA740
continue?(y/n) (I typed "y")

The Drive check is completed
68%
Sorry. But execution is terminated.
For the command sequence is failed
ROM data is exchanged completely.
The datas are different. Address = 0 Verify Data = ec Programmed Data = fc
fc 6B 1 f6 ff ff ff ff d3 f2 5c a f5 5c 6 f5
ec 69 21 b6 b7 76 7f dc d7 d4 d0 96 7f f4 46 ad

New ROM version is 1.03

!!IMPORTANT !! PLEASE DO A BACKUP OF THE 'CHANGES.LOG' FILE CREATED BY MPATCH
You can either save it to the floppy or use EDIT to view and write it down
(This file will be needed if you want to undo the changes applied by mpatch)

C:\>

After this I ctrl-alt-del to reboot the system and remove the bootable floppy disk from the drive.

Once again I use DriveInfo 2.2 and see the drive as still being RPC-1 region protected. I do not have any other DVD region killing software installed on this system. I also ran CDVDInfo Version 1.3.5 and it tells me the Drive Region is still locked too.

Hope this helps...

Thanks,

esevin

That's normal. Mpatch won't work if your firmware is already patched! The whole point of mpatch is to patch an unpatched drive. Is your is region free, mpatch won't do much of anything.
You'd need to find the original firmware from your drive.