The Firmware Page

All,

The new UJDA 7xx autopatcher bootCD has just been released!
It supercedes all previous versions of mpatch and features:
- A brand new mpatch v2.0, which includes Laoran's fix for UJDA740/UJDA745, and should fix the odd problems of some drives that could not be accessed
- The ability to backup the firmware on the bootCD (no need for a floppy drive any more!)
- Autodetection of the IDE settings (you no longer need to care about Master/Slave and Primary/Secondary IDE bus)

I have tested the bootCD on an IBM ThinkPad T41 with an UJDA 745 drive rev1.03, and it worked like charm

This time we should have a real dumbproof solution for all the UJDA 7xx users!

Instructions:

To create the mpatch bootCD:
o Follow steps 1. & 2. from http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#clean by downloading and extracting the required files
o Download mpatch v2.0 package (mpatch.zip) and unpack it into the same folder as where you have installed BCD/BFD.
o Open a command prompt, change to the BCD folder and run the command: "bcd mpatch" to build your ISO image and burn it to your CD writer.

To run the mpatch bootCD:
o Just pop in into your UJDA drive, reboot your machine and chose boot from CD from the BIOS. Then follow the instructions.

What the mpatch bootCD will do:
o It will dump, patch (if selected), backup (if selected) and flash (if selected) your UJDA 7xx firmware. You don't have to have a floppy to backup the firmware. The bootCD is able to back it up on the CD itself.
o Normally, you want to chose the default option, as it will do all the operations without any hassle

Additional notes:
o When backing up the firmware on CD, it can take a few minutes for cdrecord to fixate the session. JUST BE PATIENT!!!
o An ISO image will be released soon (but really, I would encourage everyone to follow the steps above)
o Once you have used the bootCD to backup your firmware, you will no longer be able to boot with it (but you will be able to access the backed files). Apparently adding a new session to a bootable CD makes you lose bootability
o A windows version of mpatch 2.0 executable will also be released (and if you insist, a Linux version too). However, as mpatch is ONLY able to dump and/or patch firmware but not to flash (that's the job of the DOS DRVLOADC executable), the flashing still has to be done from DOS.
There will be NO WAY to patch your drive to RPC-1 in Windows or Linux. You have to use the bootCD! But the bootCD works absolutely fine, so it's No big deal.

All of you who have been waiting long enough for an hassle proof way to patch your UJDA drive to RPC-1, now is the time to enjoy!

NB: Although it's been properly tested, this release is still slightly experimental, so please report any comments below.

Been watching for a while for a fix for a SONY iLink UJDA710. Just tried the new mpatch 2.0 but it didn't recognise the drive

Followed the instructions (nice and clear and easy - thanks NIL! )
Burned the disc fine (to CDRW) on the drive in question, booted fine (from the drive), but mpatch reported drive not found (sorry - forget the exact wording). Don't know if that was what you'd have been expecting though NIL.... if so: any chance of a solution for us iLink users sometime?
Thanks though to NIL, Laoran and everyone for your work! May be one day I'll be able to watch my films again....

UJDA710 (docking station for Sony Vaio PCG-R600HEK)
Windows XP reports SONY iLink IEEE 1394 SPB2 device
Firmware 1.50

If you want any other info just ask

Cheers!

Well I don't think there is any solution for IEEE 1394 UJDA users.
The problem is not really with mpatch, coz mpatch uses an ASPI driver to find the drive. The one provided with the bootCD is an APSI driver for IDE drives only, so of course it will not work for FireWrire drives.

Now, if you can find an ASPI driver for FireWire, mpatch will work, but it will be pointless because THE ONLY GENERIC FLASHER WE HAVE GOT FROM MATSHITA (DRVLOADC) SUPPORTS ONLY IDE DRIVES, NOT IEEE 1394.

Therefore, even if you have the patched firmware out of mpatch, you won't be able to flash.

The bootCD works only for internal IDE drives.

Sorry - hadn't quite got that bit before. Better find another way of watching my flicks. I'll never understand how owning the drive, software and DVD all legitimately doesn't give me the right to view the thing - but I guess that's why we're all here.

Thanks anyway for the help. Better luck to the rest of you.

i have a travelmate 803 with a matshita udja 740 combo drive


i burned the boot cd by following the instructions...

after i rebooted i got an error during the process

it said
error P01
could not patch

:/

btw

the reason i want to patch is that i have 100 memorex cds which i should be able to burn with 24x speed

but whenever i use one of these cds i only can record with 8x speed...

maybe someone knows something about that ;/

Just wanted to say 10x to all

I've patched my UDJA720 drive on my T30 machine and according to Nero InfoTool it's now RPC-I

Hello NIL and thanks for the major effort with this thing.

Burned the CD and rebooted.

I made the Ram drive and got to the point where I agreed to the disclaimer. Said 'Y';

It said All Done! instantly and then said:

//AspiSay: 82:00:00 60 F (Status BufLen SenseLen)
Could not open device 0,0,0

This is on an IBM A31p with the original Ultrabay drive (not firewire).

Any ideas? ... anyone?

Hello Nil,
I Followed all the procedure: After booting with CD, computer said that flashing files were successfully loaded to drive c:
then ataprobe v1.0 found matshita UJDA740 on hd2 (master)
Last sentence was device UJDA not found
Any idea?
Latitude D800, Matshita CD-RW/DVD-ROM UJDA740

I tested the automatic version on a 755z and after reading the firmware I get a "impossible yo patch" error then "done!"

would the manual mode be better? (I'll give a shot)

I've been away, so my apologies for not replying sooner.

rince, your drive might already be RPC-1. Error P01 usually pops out on drives that have already been patched. Else, it's simply that your firmware is very different from other UJDA 740 ones, which is doubtfull. Could you please check if your drive is not already region free?

Shiva_1, you might have to do it manually.
First run ataProbe to see if your drive is detected. Then try addDev aspi.sy and run something like mpatch x.y.z to see if it can find your drive. I would think that some other device of yours is probably seen as 0.0.0 instead of your UJDA drive, but I'm afraid that the bootCD is harcoded to use 0.0.0, so you have to go manual if you want to change the drive SCSI ID

olivman was the error with ataProbe or with mpatch?
What happens when you go manual and run the command:

ataProbe UJDA

And what is the EXACT report of ataProbe. ataProbe UJDA is meant to identify a drive ID beginning with "UJDA", so it might be that the ID is slightly different, but then we need to see the full output.

Charles R, I'm afraid the 75x drives are not supported.

Hello all,

I have been following this topic for a while. Good work to all of you guys. I have a VAIO with the matshita ujda730 dvd/cdr combo. It stopped reading cds. I have used the mpath version 1.12b with no luck. Is there a stable version with simple instructions for newbies computer users

Nil, would a dump of my drive help?

you can always mail it to me, but I doubt I will be working on the 750 patch for a long time...

I'm getting the Error P01. As you suggested to rince, I checked to see if my drive was already somehow region free, and it's not- Although it says "Region code: Not set", it does say "THIS DRIVE HAS REGION PROTECTION", so I'm assuming that the problem is not the same as what you mentioned previously.

My system is an Averatec 3150P, with an UJDA740 fw version 1.20. After I booted with the CD, and while it was reading the firmware to patch it, it displayed that the extra information "303210KME14490081411." Does this mean anything to you?

Be aware that region tools can be fooled to think that your drive is region protected in windows (especially if you have something like DVD Region Killer installed).

You can always mail me a firmware dump of your drive, but I don't know when/if I will find the time to look at it

Nil, I just bought an IBM T41 with UJDA 755z
I read that 75x are not supported by your solution.
Do you think there will be something one day? Would it take months? years?

Seeing how interested I am in the whole UJDA thingy, years probably...

More seriously, as long as nobody sends me dumps from the problematic drives, it is quite certain that not much is going to happen...

i have the same P01 error as orulz and rince.
my drive is a ujda740 definitely 100% locked to region1.
the system is an acer aspire 1310 series also with firmware 1.20.
the extra info i got was "305160KME14420111701".

when it tries to save the firmware it seemed to do it successfully, but to a blank file name which it couldn't find once it tried to burn it back to cd.
if you look at my old posts you will see i had similar problems with the old mpatch.
would it be any use if i send you the firmware i managed to save manually?

well, I used the dump and burn option and now my cd seem blank so I suppose I will need to start from a usb key in order to save it.

This would tend to indicate that indeed some versions of the UJDA 740 are different from others, as mpatch finds the name from the firmware itself. If the expected information is not at the proper place, it will get confused (but you should be able to force a filename to save to if you run mpatch manually).

I will also be releasing a Windows version of mpatch shortly, which should save you the hassle of going to DOS for the dumps (but, as I explained above, the only flasher we have is a DOS one, so there is no other way but to go to DOS in order to patch the drive.

Charles R, did you monitor the files that were created. Maybe you want to run the whole process in manual mode. The bootCD should burn any files that end up in the backup directory of the DOS RAM disk, so I would suspect that some problem arose with mpatch and nothing was saved.

Again, the windows version of mpatch should save you a lot of hassle in getting the dumps. I can also produce a Linux version of it, if anybody is interested.

I did manage to get my rom dumped and copied. To do so I had to redirect the output of the "dir /b" command to a batch file, then use the filename captured in that batch file to rename it. I then sent it to NIL via e-mail. NIL, did you get my mail and the attachment? I'm not sure that it all made it through your mail confirmation filter.

i've sent my version as well to compare it to.
if the windows exe can patch them successfully then i can try flashing manually in dos...

where do we find the windows version? It will be easier in order to just get the dump.

Usually means that it has not been released yet, but shortly means that I am releasing it right now:

http://www.rpc1.org/matshita/mpatch_win32.zip

For list of options, run with mpatch -h
This win32 version is completely equivalent to the DOS version of the bootCD, nothing removed, nothing added. In fact, thanks to the beauty of PLScsi, the sourcecode is exactly the same.