The Firmware Page

Isn

That has nothing to do with the OS!
The drive is locked, forever.

Dear Chef,

I notice you are writing a lot to people that have the same output from DVD info x about their UJ 846 drives as I had (that it is locked and has 4 vendor changes left, no user changes left), that "locked is locked" as you say.

I'm afraid, everyone, this seems NOT TO BE TRUE.

I confess to being a total greenhorn on this kind of thing, but thought "what the hell let's give it a go" I did the following (which sums up all the situation that people seem to be coming across)

1. I downloaded DVD info x version 1.0) and ran it on Leopard (without any problems) this showed me that:

2. Beginning state of drive was:
Vendor: Matshita
Model: DVD-R UJ-846
Firmware: FQ3T, RPC-2 (region locked), State is PERMANENT, 4 vendor
resets left, 0 region change left, Region 1

3. I downloaded and ran the UJ-846-FQ3T.zip file from Firmwares RPC1 column of http://www.powerbook-fr.com/dossiers/dv ... cle30.html

4. It told me it was not compatible with this version of OSX.

5. I discovered i had be OSX 10.4+. I tried to create a partition on mh Lacie External drive but it wanted to erase the drive contents.

6. I created a small partition (10gig) on my MacBook (easily done in Leopard) and installed a minimal OSX 10.4.6 on it (nno bundled software,no language options and no printer drivers)

7. Booted from that and ran the Firmware updater (the one for region free).

8. Low and behold when I then later ran the DVD Info X it gives me this:
Vendor: MATSHITA
Model: DVD-R UJ-846
Firmware: FQ3T
RPC-1 (region free)

9. Then using Region X I set the User changes back to 5 and the region to "unset". I put in a region 2 dvd and it did not work (did not even appear on the desktop! Had to restart and hold down trackpad button to eject disk)

10. went back into Regin X and set the region to 2 (as per DVD) and it worked fine.

It seems that it is not the case that Locked is Locked and State permanent doe snot mean that.

Surely if that were the case then Ben would not have gone to trouble to write a patch to unlock the drives!! the whole point of this forum as far as I can see it to get round that "permanent" locked state.

If a greenhorn such as I can get through the process and succeed I hope that might give heart that others can do it to!

we all owe a huge debt of thanks to Ben for this and to _chef_ for moderating it. But I do feel (sorry _chef_) that I HAVE to point out that I do not agree with your "locked is locked" statements adn that those statements may depress or dishearten people already frustrated users who are barred by absurd rules from playing legally produced DVD's they have bought legally wherever and whenever they want.

Let's all hold up a glass to this!

Kind regards

Nick

Hi Nick,

the output you have posted means clearly that the drive got locked to region 2 because it has no user region changes left. Only 4 vendor changes were left, but those can reallyonly be used/changed by the vendor/manufacturer.
The normal case is that when a locked drive got flashed, the region changes left will not increase.
Either the region changes were reported wrongly or ben11 found a way to use the commands for usage by vendor/manufacturer itself.
But I think its the earlier one, because all similar tools like RegionX will report the status wrong.

Dear Nick,

I have the same problem on my iMAC.

I am wondering if doing the proces you outlined is really that simple? will the iMAC reboot from the Tiger?
How do I make a new partition and make it bootable?

Thanks
Yuval

I have to add, RegionX running disguises the true region setting/status of a DVD drive. So even DVDInfoX will report the status wrong, under normal circumstances.

If you really want to see the status of your drive, make sure RegionX is disabled, then check it using DVDInfoX or similar.

Dear Chef,

re:

What other tools regarding dvd & burning are also installed?

Is there another tool like Discinfo which would show more info about the drive??

Guess what people, I have done it! I have gotten the firmware update to work on Leopard (in my case: the ZB0E firmware). My drive was previously region locked, and is now confirmed region free.

How was it done? First, I determined that the updater that was checking for version 10.3.9 or 10.4.6+ of Mac OS X was getting this information from the file /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist. So I simply edited this file to change my version of Mac OS X from 10.5.1 to 10.4.9.

Then I ran the update utility for my firmware. The first time, it bailed out, and DVD Info X confirmed that it had failed. I ran it again, and this time it succeeded. I'm not sure why it was necessary to run it twice, or whether this will be necessary for everyone.

Then I changed SystemVersion.plist back again, and rebooted like the update utility told me to. I then ran DVD Info X again which confirmed that I now had a region free drive. I have successfully played disks from regions 1, 2 and 4 to test.

Of course, DVD Player still starts up when I insert a disk, and if the disk is a different region than DVD Player is set to, it prompts me to change region (though I'm back to 5 available changes, up from 3). There are already documented ways to get around this. The Region X utility is one of them, though that doesn't seem to work on Leopard. So instead, I just installed a Preference Pane called RCDefaultApp that enabled me to change the default DVD player to VNC, which as others have noted doesn't check the disk region.

I hope this helps others!

I just tried what terminus said.
Worked from the first go!

Screenshot below. I'm also going to test some dvd's now in vlc.



[click for original size]

Edit:
Tried a region 2 BSG Season One dvd and works fine
Also tried a region 1 Season Two disk and ok aswel!

Hello

These steps work with the firmware HBEA in leopard?

http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=43432

I presume so, I used a different firmware than terminus and it worked for me.

Worked fine for me
I've got a MacBook Pro with a Matshita UJ-85J FBZ8.
And with the new version of Region X, it works great!

As editing the file: SystemVersion.plist, because when I try to edit it with me does not allow textedit

I used Microsoft Word (yeah... I know!) for the second editing.

It can edit the file SystemVersion.plist, change in 10.5.1 to 10.4.9, then try running the application: update HBEA to region free and not executed
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks

Need more information. Perhaps you could post the output of DVD Info X before and after, and post the contents of SystemVersion.plist.

Open Terminal.app, cd to the folder where SystemVersion.plist is located
sudo su (this will prompt for your password)
cp SystemVersion.plist SystemVersion.plist~
nano SystemVersion.plist, ctrl+o to save
--- leave open the terminal
run the patch but don't reboot yet
--- go back to the open term
cp SystemVersion.plist~ SystemVersion.plist
exit
exit
--- now reboot

Hi all,

I get the following error under 10.5.1 no matter whether the version is modified in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist or not. This is for the original SuperDrive update or the RPC1 firmware updates. Any ideas?

Hi All

I am trying to get my DVD drive region free but I am getting stuck trying to change the SystemVersion.plist from 10.5.1 to 10.4.9 as it is saying that I do not have permission to perform this.
I only have Leopard on my system so I really would love more help getting past this stage, and any more detailed instructions on what I need to do next, I am not that great with computers and have only had the iMac G5 since Christmas, so any tips to get this done would be great then I can out the PC in the bin for good.

Thanks

Peter

The last post by eth0 above gives one way of doing it. Other way is:

1. Go to SystemVersion.plist in the Finder.
2. Get Info on it.
3. Click the lock symbol down the bottom.
4. Type your password.
5. Change "Everyone" to "Read & Write".

This will give you permission to open the file with TextEdit.

Thanks Guy,s I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but I have just tried doing both the ways terminus and Denny has suggested, but I am still not been giving "permission" to do this.

Any more tips, please!!

Did you try the way eth0 suggested too?

Terminus's method worked perfectly!

Flashed
UJ-857E ZA0E

i did have to run the app twice like terminus but second time worked fine. changed the text file back to 10.5.1 and rebooted.

For those unable to edit the .plist file don't forget to give the folder its in read/write permissions as well.

i did the right click "get info", then click on the little lock symbol at the bottom and change "everyone" to read/write for both the file and its folder.

*yay* for region free!