The Firmware Page

Hello,

All you need is to change the jumper behind the drive.

here is the schema from behind the drive:

: : : | : :::::::::::::::: IDE Interface ::::::::::::::: | POWER |

^ here is the jumper in slave mode

That means in the default position, it is in slave, so for the IDE interface of the PC, it will be in the ID 1 or 3 as you experimented.

To have ID 0 or 2 you need to move the jumper like that:

: : : : | :::::::::::::::: IDE Interface ::::::::::::::: | POWER |

If you are not sure, it marked in the plastic as MAST and SLAVE, if I am not wrong. ( I haven't remove my drive, since my flash has worked correctly!!)

I hope, it will work right now !

And remember, put back the jumper in his initial position (slave) before putting the drive in the mac !!!

Good luck !

LG 8)

Hello Little Green

thank you for your hints. I've been able to flash without problems and now Drive Info shows "No region protection"
Yipee and thanks to all who did this great work.

Gaudenz

Hey >NIL, how difficult was it to update the flash utility to recognize OEM drives?? I would like to update the firmware of my IBM drive (rebadged panasonic LF-D291) but the flash utilitly (ODDiag.exe) in the zip file:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/dvdf/wa130.zip

only recognizes Panasonic drives and not the other OEM drives. Is it simple to patch the flash utility program??

-West

Well with a good disassembler and a little experience, you can always do wonders.
It was quite easy to patch the Pioneer DOS tools I must say...

NIL,

I've tested the Pioneer Universal Update. It failed.

Here's the report....

1) PIONEER DVD-RW-104
2) v1.2
3)

upgr4.exe v 1.01.a

ID = 0 --> error : cd rom not present
ID = 1 --> error : cd rom not present
ID = 2 --> pioneer dvd-rw dvr-104 1.2 02/03/19
ID = 3 --> lite on ltr-32123s x50r 02/03/19

enter target id --> 2
now run contents checking...
now update mode setup executing --> failed --> error : sense key =2

I've tried this both with & without the lite-on connected.

Please help

Kindest Regards
Sanjay

I have just flashed my pioneer DVR-104, the flashing seemed to go fine. however now that I am in Windows XP it is noticed but it will not read any disks and is useless and will freeze windows continually.

I see your program allows downgrading, how do I use this to downgrade to an the official version? - I don't want to stab in the dark and [*Profanity*] it up even more... if that is possible.

robin.munro
There is NO CHANCE that the patch is responsible for your windows freezing.

I must say that I'm getting a bit fed up of having to repeat all the time that all a patch does is address the RPC-1 issues. It doesn't change ANYTHING else!!!

So, NO the patch is not responsible for your drive seamingly not reading disks and NO the patch is not responsible for your freezout.

Flashing the unpatched firmware won't do anything (If you want to do it, be my guest. You can find the RPC-2 firmware all over the internet, and you can use the DOS upgrade from the floppy)

I know, it used to work fine, you flashed a patched firmware and now loosedows behaves badly. Must be the RPC-1 patch, huh?

WRONG!!!!

If you knew how much Windows is an ass when it comes to handling hardware changes, you wouldn't have the slightest doubt in your mind about what's going on there.
If your flash went alright, then your drive is alright, and I have enough users to back me up when saying the the patched DVR-104 v1.20 works perfectly fine with windows XP.

You wanna be convinced? Just pick up another computer with windows XP, install your drive there, and see how it behaves there...

Now, all I wrote above is based on the hypothesis that your flashing went fine like you say...
But just as a matter of making sure of it, could you tell what firmware revision the drive currently reports?

sanjayjoshi

Make sure that you have removed any disc form your drive before flashing.

I have been up all night trying to find a fix for it and now the drive works...

How? I don't know!

It did the same a while back with my Teac Re-Writer, I flashed it, it all seemed fine then the bios could not even find it. It would not read or write and hung the system whenever there was a disc in the drive.

I fiddled around with the connections (doing nothing! - I have a degree in Computing!) and all of a sudden it is fine again!

No idea what it is!

Sorry for throwing s**t your way!

Well I'm glad to hear it worked.
I received your mail btw.

What I think might have happened is that the drive never went out failsafe mode.
In order to flash, the drive must enter failsafe mode (in which it says that the firmware rev is 0000). Once in this mode, it will not read any disk, and the light might flash on and off endlessly until put back in normal mode, at the end of the flash.

If the restore to normal mode command didn't work properly, then your drive might have remained in failsafe mode and kept the behaviour you described.

But now that you say that tampering with the cables sorted it all out, I don't really know what happened there.

got my pioneer dvd r/rw 104 working thanks for your fix this guy is a god we need more people like this keep up the good work

sanjay joshi uk

DRIVE VENDOR : PIONEER
DRIVE PROID : DVD-RW DVR-104
DRIVE REVISION : 1.30
VENDOR SPECIFIC : 02/05/31 PIONEER
INTERFACE : ATAPI
RPC2 SCHEME : YES
SETTING STATUS : NOT PERMANENT
USER CHANGES : 4
MANUFACTOR RESET : 4
REGION CODE : 1


The universal patch applied ok, but unfourtunally the dvd-r didn't seem to care about it. It still says it's 1.30 RPC-2.

Any ideas?

Edit: The drive is bought as a pioneer drive so it shouldn't be a sony one.

Hi everyone,...
I just wanna ask about the difference between Pionner 115 and 116,...
I have 115 and already patched it with version 1.33
Thanks for the guy that make that patch, it works fine in XP build 2600 but its not working under Win ME, I wonder why?
Every time i tested i always clean instal the OS,...
Anybody can give me the solution??

Thanks,...

I had problems with the universal upgrade. I created the boot disk and ran it; the kernel upgrade completed but the firmware upgrade hung. I waited an hour and finally rebooted. Windoze recognised the drive as Revision 000 00/00/00 and the drive itself was dead. Repeating the operation produced the same hang on the last stage. This is where I started to sweat...

I downloaded the official Pioneer upgrade and ran it from within a dos box in W98SE; that restored the drive to life but of course it was now RPC-2 again. So I extracted the RPC-1 firmware from the Universal Upgrade, overwrote the Pioneer version and tried the Pioneer upgrade again. Of course it wouldn't run cos it thought it was already 1.20. So I used the Universal Upgrade again, same result - hang - but after this the Pioneer utility worked with the RPC-1 code and the drive is fine. I think the Universal Upgrade DOS utility barfs on my system for some reason.
Now I'm delighted with my newly RPC-1'd drive - thanks guys.

Drive - Compaq DVR-104 RPC-2 1.10 as shipped, always reported itself as Pioneer DVR-104. System - W98SE. PIII 650, 256MB RAM.
After upgrade - DVR-104 RPC-1 1.20.

Hope this post helps anyone who has the same prob. and thinks they've [*Profanity*] $500 worth of drive. PS- I've flashed Tosh and Teac drives before, so I'm not a total novice.

Oh - the actual output from the updater - I'm not going to risk running it again and can't totally remember each line, but it went something like this:

Loading Kernel Firmware binary... -> Completed
Updating kernel firmware... -> Completed
Loading Firmware binary... - > Completed
Updating firmware...

(hangs at this point, no further output.) Good luck and thanks again.

I hadn't read all the entries in this topic before my last post, or I'd have seen the one where someone had the same problem, and the reply about vectors to the normal mode being lost following the kernel load. Actually I didn't know about this forum when I flashed the drive - pity because I would have saved myself a lot of sweat...

Anyway there are a couple of things that come out of this - (1) the dodgy Universal Upgrade does achieve something positive - the drive can be subsequently flashed with any level of code, even a downgrade cos it thinks it's 000 - and (2) there's something curious about the DOS upgrade failure when both kernel and normal firmware are written, which should be worth investigating.

Thanks, NIL, keep up the great work - you're making a lot of people very happy.

x SarahP

I have an FP iMac and since i've upgrade to the final version of Jaguar (6C115), i've got plenty of kernel panics. (and weirdly it's the old fashion text-based kernel panics, not the new graphic one)

I though at first my install wasn't good but after a fresh re-install, i'm still getting all those kernel panics...

after long tests, i've noticed i'm getting them most of the time when the system try to access the cds in the Pionner drive...

Could the v1.2 of the firmware creates an incompatibilite between jaguar and the drive? and is there any option to reverse to the original firmware of the drive that came with the iMac? it could help me troubleshooting my problem...

and if it's not from there, i'll keep checking...

Well, all I can say is that I just upgraded my OS X from 10.1 to 10.2 a few hours ago, and from now everything works perfectly. ( I have a FP iMac)

And yes I have converted my Pioneer DVR-104 from the Apple firmware to the RPC-1 from >NIL:.

I will continue to test, but for now everything I wanted to burn has been a success. No bad news for me in the Mac world and the patch RPC-1 !!

LG 8)

and guess what? it's not the patch as i suspected at first...

because the kernel panics were mostly because of the i/o framework, i though about the patch but after a few more tests, i think it's because of my MMC reader... since i d/ced it, i've got no panics anymore...

hi

im running a pc with xp on an abit m/b athlon 2000+xp , tried patching the a104 with the universal patch but hung at writing firmware process making drive unusable , managed to flash with unpatched 1.2 firmware to get it working but need to unlock it any ideas please ???

ok got this working now

ran the universal patch and hung when writing new firmware

rebooted and computer reports 0000 firmware

downloaded genuine 1.2 off this site
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/f ... /dvdrf.htm

then swapped the 1.2 file off the floppy into this patch and ran it now have a mutli region unlocked drive using dvd region killer

superb

there was an incompatibility between Jaguar and the 1.20 firmware... New firmware released from apple...

http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=7112


Steve

Hello I've a problem programming 1.31 into my Pioneer 103 (Original) drive.

Started off life as 1.20 RPC-2,then 1.31 RPC-1,then 1.32 RPC-2.
(I was having problems writing DVD's that my own DVD player (set-top) could read someone else was able to do this 0 they were running 1.32 - needless to say that wasn't the problem)

So I'm now trying to put 1.31 back in.

Running from DOS I get


/// DVD-ROM/DVD-RW Firmware Upgrade Utility Ver1.11B

1 target device(s) is found.
Do you want to upgrade the all drives automatically ? (Y or N)
Start upgrading the master drive on primary IDE.
Current Revision>> PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 1.32 02/09/17

Processing 0%
Failed to upgrade. (offset = 000000)


From windows I get

/// DVD-ROM/DVD-RW Firmware Upgrade Utility Ver1.12E


(Do you want to upgrade the all drives automatically ? (Y or N) - windows box)

Current Revision>> PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 1.32 02/09/17
FW is already latest.
Upgrade operation is completed. (repeated in a windows pop dialog box)


I read somewhere it wasn't possible to downgrade.
My DVD drive is standard IDE on Primary Master as I've a raid controller with the Hard drives on it.

Any help appreciated - I suspect your a busy man

Bullfrog

P.S. typing upgdvd>xxx.txt saves having to take a note of the outputyou just have to remember to press Y after a few seconds as you can;t see the messages

you could try the method ive used above as the first part fails and leaves the drive reading oooo firmware and then you can patch the firmware you want.

Thanks

Mine still says 1.32 on reboot.But I'll try your alternative reprogram method later and get back to you.

Bullfrog

I have DVR-104EA model with v1.30 firmware, I cannot flash this drive I keep getting "MODEL NAME OF KERNAL PART IS NOT MATCHED" error every time.

Any ideas ?

Cheers

Spirit UK

Your drive is not Poineer OEM but you should be able to flash it with the Hacked flashing utility by Battousai refered to in this thread
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=8463