The Firmware Page

Hi,

I have thid drive in my new iMac.
What the hell is that brand?
Is there anything to open it up?

thank you

these are NEC/Sony Drives, what do you mean open them up? if you want RPC1, you would need to see if binflash could dump the firmware, and then ask liggy nicely if he can help

Sony Nec Optiarc aka Nec/Sony.

thank you ..

I think I leave it like this for now.
I have a firewire /usb2 Pioneer DVDR-112D, I might use window to make that region free ..
thanx

L.

Any idea when a RPC-1 firmware for this drive will be aviable. I've just got my new iMac with this drive and i'd like to have it codefree.

see my first post

Looks like this is the same hardware as the 7630 drive - just without DVD-RAM support.
While Binflash probably does not support this drive right now, it should be able to create an identification file that allows me to add support.

@Liggy
That would be great. How long do you think this would take? Until today i've used NecflashX to patch NEC drives, can this tool be used with your new firmware?

It all depends on when someone can provide me with an identification file for this drive. With this file I'm then able to add support for the 5630 to Binflash. Updating my software won't take long, however due to limited Internet access right now I cannot say when I'm able to upload the files.

I cannot say anything about NecflashX - that's not my tool.

I realy like to help but i don't know how to create such a identification file (perhaps a little hint?).

NecflashX uses the same binflash version from you. So if binflash supports this drive then NecflashX will work as well.

First of all you need a Binflash version 1.34 or later. It's recommended to always use the latest version.

Let's say you have the executable on your desktop:
Open the terminal application
enter cd Desktop
enter ./necflash -scan
This should show a letter that your drive is assigned to. Probably it's A: - don't omit the colon!
enter ./necflash -identify A: identify.txt - if in the previous step anything else but A: was shown, use this value instead.
This will create a text file called identify.txt and I need the content of this file.

Unfortunatly this doesen't work, i always get the error "no supported device found". What a shame

To confirm, I also tried folowing Liggy's instructions using Binflash 1.41 on a new iMac. (And I have a second dvd drive connected by Firewire.)

Got the same result: No supported devices found.

The actual firmware says 1AHM, this seems to be an Apple special firmware. Could this be the reason necflsh fails?

This firmware revision does not really look like this drive is based on genuine NEC/Optiarc hardware. Perhaps this drive is more similar to the Optiarc AD-7530A which is unsupported for the same reasons.

I don't think there's much that I can do about this right now.

What a shame.

First i thought "yes! finaly Apple uses Optiarc drives instead of those ugly Matsushitas" and now there are various RPC-1 firmwares ready to flash (thanks to ben11) but now one for this kind of drive

Since Optiarc started rebadging LiteOn drives recently (AD-7190A), the AD-5630A could be a LiteOn as well. In this case all the available tools for LiteOn could work too, however I'm not sure which tools are available for Mac.

Ok, i

Here

_________________
Flash or dump your NEC or Optiarc DVD burner firmware on Mac, Windows, DOS or Linux with Binflash.
Visit Liggy's and Dee's NEC and Optiarc firmware and tools page.

Thanks Liggy.
Then i will try to dump the firmware from the drive ASAP and send it to you so you can make a RPC1 version out of it.

EDIT:
I've managed to dump the firmware successfuly, the only thing left is to patch the dumped firmware to RPC1. Liggy you've got PM.

Finaly the RPC-1 firmware is ready to flash (thanks to Liggy, you're the best). I've tested this firmware on my iMac 24" 2,8GHz Core 2 Extreme and it works perfectly.

here's the firmware:
http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/de/Optiarc-AD-5630A/

Flash tool for OSX here:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16975

and finaly necflash from Liggy:
http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/

hi,
i have the same mac and drive as you, but somehow it wont work for me. i can dump the firmware without errors, but when i want to flash

this is the code i get:

Binflash - NEC version - (C) by Liggy and Herrie
Visit http://binflash.cdfreaks.com

Binflash version v1.42
Drive interface v1.34
NEC interface v1.42
NEC internal v1.42

Reading Firmware version...
sh: -c: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
sh: -c: line 2: syntax error: unexpected end of file
Now all work is done.


any idea what that means?

many thanks

Hm.. strange (for me it has worked). Have you used the NecflashX GUI with binflash or the command line? With the GUI please make sure to update it with the actual version of binflash (right klick on NexflashX -> Contents -> Resources and replace necflash with the newest one from Liggy).

Otherwise if you have BootCamp and Windows XP installed you can boot from this partition and try to flash your drive with the Windows version od Binflash.

These error messages must be caused by the NecflashX GUI. They are definitely not part of Binflash itself.