The Firmware Page

Making your Matshita DVD-writer region free running Windows

As the firmware currently running on your drive is used, you do not have to worry about firmware compatibility issues and you do not need to search the Internet for firmwares.
The Windows based dump and flash tool released here allow you to apply an RPC1 patch to your Matshita drive, so it is region free when you also use a software solution handling the region counter.
The release consists of two parts. A firmware dump tool, that reads the firmware from your drive and generates one original and one RPC1 patched firmware file and a flash tool, that allows to flash these files to your drive.

Supported drives:
The tools work with Matshita UJ-84x, UJ-85x, UJ-86x, UJ-87x, UJ-88x, UJ-89x drives.
Matshita BD drives and the old UJ-81x, UJ-82x, UJ-83x drives are not supported yet.

Utility releases:
2010-03-14 MatshitaWinDump 1.01 - Windows based firmware dump and RPC1 patch tool
This release is an advanced version of the MacOS based dumper, as it can apply the RPC1 patch and write the package format that is needed for flashing.
2010-11-04 MatshitaWinDump 1.02 - added support for Matshita drives having a hp drive id.
2010-03-14 MatshitaWinFlash - Windows based firmware flash tool

Risks:
In the worst case your drive will be dead after upgrading to the patched firmware. The risk is quite low as the dumper, flasher and RPC1 patch are tested on several different drives and Windows 32- and 64-bit versions.

Windows dumping instructions:
- Download and unzip MatshitaWinDump.zip
- Make sure there is no disc in the drive
- Start MatshitaWinDump.bat and follow the instructions
The dump tools creates two files of ~800kb size, an original and an RPC1 patched firmware file that can be flashed with the flash tool.

A typical dump session looks like this:


Windows flashing instructions:
- Download and unzip MatshitaWinFlash.zip
- Make sure there is no disc in the drive
- Drop the firmware .dat file you want to flash on the MatshitaWinFlash.bat batch file.
- Enter the drive letter of your Matshita drive.
- In case of drive/firmware mismatch or a corrupted firmware file the drive will not be flashed.

A typical flash session looks like this:

Check RPC state:
Make sure the RPC region on your drive is already set. You can check that with DiscInfo.

Important RPC1 basics:
When your drive is running in RPC1 mode, you need a software tool to handle the region changes. Under Windows you could use DVD Region Killer. Without such a tool you still can not change the regions as you like.

Credits:
Credits go to ben11 for the simple_flash and matshita_memory (dump) tools, the obfuscate source code and the RPC1 patch.
Credits also go to all the volunteers who tested the tools on their drives.

THANK YOU ala42

Excellent tools

Ala any chance for UJ-2xx Blu-ray drives support?

Yes, but it takes time, as I have to make a new rpc1 patch from scratch.

Hey - thanks again for your efforts here as I understand Matshita are both a pain and a woefully small segment of the community.

Running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, with a Matshita UJ-870BJ SATA drive operating 1.02 stock firmware, a working copy of AnyDVD (not that it does much at the moment), and getting this screen dump after inputting the correct drive letter:



Have tried setting dump_matshita to run as admin, as well as switching compatibility mode to Win XP SP3 and Win 2000 on both it and the batch file. Then tried running the required command manually, got the same error.

Help?

Could be that Windows 7 x64 Ultimate is not the right choice to use this util.
Please try with a 32-bit OS.

But the real problem in this case could be the used SATAcontroller (setup).
Which one do you use and in which mode?

That's going to prove to be a difficult task on a laptop.

Will a 32-bit WinPE environment be sufficient, or does the drive need to be empty for the dump process?


The board is built off the RS780MN chipset, which usually has the AMD SB700 chipset operating as the SATA controller, but Win 7 is using the generic driver.

While it does have AHCI up and working, I think it's safe to say it doesn't have a RAID mode, especially seeing as there isn't one in BIOS.

this has been tested on 64bit windows, have you an option to turn AHCI off in the bios? if not trying booting into safemode, and trying from there

AHCI did the trick. Cheers!

Cool!

Were you able to use the tool then?

Hello,

I am trying to use the dump tool above on a Matshita DVD-ROM SR-8178.
But, I am facing a problem.

See below :


I do not know why it cannot read the memory ... but the device name "\\.\d:" must not be the good one.

Do you have any kind of explanation ?
I am not in AHCI mode ... I am in IDE Enhanced mode (both IDE and SATA).

I use Windows XP SP2 and the drivers are the one of Microsoft from 2001.
In Windows Devices Manager I have 2 "primary IDE" and 2 "secondary IDE" due to the enhance mode to use my SATA disks.

Thanks.

Your drive is not supported, check the first post again.

Oops, sorry ... Arf, this drive will make me crazy ...

Excellent job, ala42!

Many thanks for your utilities, which help me to convert MATSHITADVD-RAM_UJ880AS_1.50 into RPC1 drive.

I faced the same problem that Kana-chan reported, and booting in safe mode did fix it.

After patching, some software players (such as Nero ShowTime) now play all my DVDs, and others eg. Toshiba DVD Player cannot work with few foreign discs which Nero understands.

Do you have any possible explanation of this fact?

I think the problem lies with such "special" dvd player software which only allows ONE region to be selected and used...

Hi guys!!

I need help here. I'm really looking forward to an RPC-1 firmware of my Matshita UJ862AS drive!

I'm facing the following error even when I try running in safe mode:

Enter the drive letter of the Matshita drive to backup the firmware: d:
You have selected the source drive d:

dump_matshita V 0.1
// sptxSay.DeviceIoControl: x1 (1) Incorrect function.
// sptxSay x 0 0 29 E (ioctl status length senseLength)

My laptop is a Sony Vaio Z (VGN-Z21VN) running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and I can't control AHCI in the system BIOS

Any tips? Thanks in advance

Boot Win7 in safe mode and try again.

I have successfully made my Vaio Z590 region free in Windows 7 64-bit, after booting in safe mode and applying the patch.

I want to join an earlier poster in extending a HUGE THANK YOU to ala42 for making this available. I travel the world and it's essential to be able to play DVDs wherever I go.

Please carry on this work and I hope we can see patches for earlier Matshita DVD drives as well as the new Blu-ray drives.

Hello,

I like to use the MatshitaWinFlash Tool to make my MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-844 RC02 region code free. I have already suceeded with step 1 of dumping and converting the firmware. However, while trying to flash the drive I keep getting the following error:



I am using Windows 7 x64 with ahci enabled. Unfortunately, disabling ahci in the bios, results in a boot failure, so this seems not to be an option. Booting windows in failsafe mode also does not work (I get the same error). Is there any other way which I can try to flash my drive? For instance, is it possible to create a boot-cd to flash my drive, so that I could turn off ahci temporarily?

Thanks!

Best regards,
Bob

There might be an easier solution. Read your private messages.

Hi, i have a Matshita DVD+RW UJ-867S and i was wondering if it is supported by the MatshitaWinDump Tool.

I just want to make sure before i do after to harm my dvd player in my laptop.

Thanks, its much appreciated

It is supported, see the first post.

Hi,

first of all thanks for your good work of returning the power to the user.

Unfortunately I am not getting to the end of the process with my MATSHITA UJ892AS. Quite frankly, if it wasn't part of a notebook I would probably send it back. Anyway, I disgress.

I went through a number of hoops with this. First I had to create a bootable CD with Windows PE on another machine (since I have no Windows installed on the notebook), then I had to switch the SATA mode to IDE prior to booting the Win PE environment, then I had to copy the patched firmware file to something simpler right into the directory with simpleflash.exe and call it manually.

After all that simpleflash.exe would actually start the process of flashing the file ... only to exit with an error code. It says "sp_write returned -258". I managed to get hold of the source simple_flash.c (posted by ben11 in this very forum) and it seems it refers to some sense code 0xFE, but frankly I have reached the end of my powers.

If anyone has an idea what else I can try I'd be most grateful.

Thanks,

Mar2u

Post the complete output you get while flashing. Does the dump tool work ? Which Windows version and service pack level did you use for the PE disk ? Did you use the Microsoft IDE driver ? Is the SATA controller in IDE mode ?
Are you using Linux ?

Hey guys,

I couldn't dump the firmware even in safe mode. I can't disable AHCI in bios. What should I do?

Enter the drive letter of the Matshita drive to backup the firmware: d:
You have selected the source drive d:

dump_matshita V 0.1
// sptxSay.DeviceIoControl: x1 (1) Incorrect function.
// sptxSay x 0 0 29 E (ioctl status length senseLength)

Target is a UJ862AS.

Thanks