The Firmware Page

Thanks for the reboot tip!

It doesn't work yet, but it's better. It's recognized back as a GS23N as originally:



Do you know how to exit from recovery mode?

if it recognizes it as it normally should be then its out of recovery mode..

before your post showed COR7 meaning its running off the core firmware which is in recovery mode. rebooting takes it out of recovery mode as long as you dont hold the eject button while the system is turning on...

also whats wrong with the drive now. whats not working.

The drive doesn't take any CD (If I put it on the drive, it doesn't pull them).

I'm not sure I did the right thing, but I restarted a flash in the drive like this:

My goal was to put back the original untouched firmware I got from the first flasher -m command. But the flashing process is stalled again (20 minutes).
I should calm down and stop doing things without knowing what I do. I'm a bit nervous cause I bought this computer last week and am going overseas with him tomorrow. So a RPC-free drive would be cool, a working drive is OK, a bricked drive is bad...

Well, what should I do now? Reboot again? Flash with a special command? What's the difference between main and core firmware? Should I flash both? My goal is to flash a RPC2-autoreset patched firmware and accessorily to have a working drive (nervous laughing)

core_firmware.bin is not the main firmware that is what is used to save your drive if it got messed up.. dont flash it unless you really need to..


the main firmware is what you want to flash... as for the hanging I will update the code tonight and post it when i wake up to not hang there..

the hang is caused by code that is ok to run in windows because windows does not lose the drive after flashing but on the max osx after it finishes flashing it loses the drive.. either i would have to re-find the drive (maybe) or just not call that code.

also after every flash you must reboot your system for it to take affect.

Lol, OK, so I'm lucky to still have a core firmware after all those flash tries...

Tried to flash back the main firmware. Will reboot and stay you tuned.

But one thing that bugs me, you make the difference between core and main when extracting only by the string passed to -m argument? Wouldn't it be safer to use different letters like -c for core and -m for main?

From worse to worse, now after flashing the main it still said verification failed:

As I understood I can ignore this. I just rebooted but drive went back to GS21N:


And of course it doesn't work. Any clues?

PS: Thanks indeed for helping me.

like i said

firm_flasher: Failed Self diag. Possibly bad drive flash!
cmd_flashfirm: Flashing process failed

message is invalid on the mac osx and any time you flash your drive you need to reboot..

if you bump your eject button for to long on boot it will put your drive into recovery mode.. you dont want that at least not right now..

reboot your system flash your drive with the main firmware.. then reboot again and post the info on it.

Followed your instructions (reboot, flashed main, reboot) and drive still in COR7:

have you tried to power off your machine completely and then turn it back on.. if that does not work then we have to try something else

Since it's a laptop, would you suggest to also disconnect the battery? Like a hard reset?

[EDIT]Yes!!! I shutdown the computer (not reboot, shutdown). Waited 5 sec, prayed a little and pressed the power button again:


Working again!!! Wow, really thank you!!

Only thing is that now I don't know which firmware I finally put in the drive... Will start again with the patched firmware.

Do you have any interest in the dump on my core/main original firmwares? If so, I could upload it somewhere for you.

as long as there is no power getting to the cdrom drive then its fine.. we just need the drive to fully power off.

I just re-flashed my drive to make sure it flashes fine on the mac osx and it does.. something must of gone wrong in the flashing. I would prolly have to consult ala on if the recovery mode flashing is different then normal flashing on these drives.. if it is then im going to have to code the recovery mode flashing ability into it.

Flashing main firmware is OK on OS X after following those recommendations you made:

1) Do not try to flash the core firmware. The flash will stale and you don't need to bother your core firmware to rpc1 or so. So leave it alone!

2) Turn off and switch on again the Mac after each flashing. It is important to not reboot as the drive is still powered and so a reboot don't have the same effect as a power off.

3) Before flashing (using the -f argument), backup your original firmware (with the -m option) just in case the new firmware is wrong. In this case you can undo your flashing with the original one.

4) Ignore the following message:


5) Remove disk from the drive before flashing

I think if you are aware of this it is safe to use your flasher...

Wow, you don't have idea of how I am happy to know that I have a dvd working again and will be able to watch some movies without caring about the zone during the trip! Thank you again for all those instructions, indeed!

thanks for the step by step i will add them into the tutorials i plan on making. and congrats

You're welcome to add those instructions.

And how about differentiate the -m core_firmware.bin from -m main_firmware.bin ?

-m switch means for it to dump the main firmware

the
-c switch is for dumping the core firmware..

the core firmware is the recovery firmware its barebone to get the drive seen by an os so it can be flashed..

the main firmware is used in the drives normal state and is fully functional


if you id -m core.bin and -m main.bin the two files would be the same since both dumped the main firmware hence the -m

Oh, sorry, the confusion is mine!

I misread the instructions you gave and tough the name was the important thing.

And when you do a -f it will detect if it's a core or main firmware we are trying to flash?

[edit]Just tried launching a zone 2 then a zone 4 dvds. DVD Player of OS X just accept them without anoying about zones and DVD Info X shows:


So, if you also want a region patched DVD in your Macbook Pro 13" or other Mac with a LG GS23N or similar LG drive, that's what you need:
1) flasher (download from this thread link)
2) MediaCodeSpeedEdit (MCSE)
3) A way to run MCSE (Wine in my case, Crossover, parallels, bootcamp, a real Windows PC, ...)

How to cook it all together
1) run "./flasher -d 1 -m main_firmware.bin" from Terminal to extract the firmware from your drive
2) run MCSE and open the main_firmware.bin you just extracted
3) tick the RPC2 auto reset box (and do other changes, if you want so)
4) save MCSE firmware as main_firmware_speedpatched.bin for example
5) flash your drive with "./flasher -d 1 -f main_firmware_speedpatched.bin"
6) shutdown your computer (do not reboot) and then turn it on again.
7) That's it, your drive is RPC patched!

PS: Instructions are given as it. I nor anyone else than you are responsible for the patch of your drive. Things may go wrong and you may loose your drive. Applying those steps mean that you agree with the potential damage and do it at your own risk.

No, that is not your problem. The GS23 SB00 firmware file in the rpc1 database tested and working fine. The flash you made using the MAx flasher failed and the drive is in safe mode now, which allows to reflash it.
The GS21 and GS23 are the same drives and use the same bootcode, which has a GS21 id, so you see it in safe mode because the flash procedure failed.

No, the Mac flasher failed, the drive is in safe mode now. The GS23 SB00 firmware is tested and fine. It is no fake.

Try the Mac flasher again and if it still failes, flash the GS23 SB00 firmware from the rpc1 database under windows.

Hi ala42,

Yeah, it's my fault, I just [*Profanity*] up with the flasher. I'm confident the firmware posted works, if you affirm so. Personally (as you can read in the thread) I just used the firmware extracted from my drive. As it works fine, I didn't test back the downloaded file from rpc1.

Cheers

devilsclaw,

I think what confused macuserfr (and me, until I read this) was that in your Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:41 am post, you include the -m switch in both the main and core firmware dump commands.

thanks,
kymyrra

thanks didnt notice it until you pointed it out.. fixed it.

Hi,

I downloaded your flasher program (console version) for windows and was very impressed with it's functionality. The dumping and ripping worked just fine, but not flashing.

I have a dual boot macbook, SL and Win 7, with a GS21N superdrive. I had previously flashed the drive with an MCSE patched firmware version SA17.

Apple recently came up with a new version, but had to be downloaded in a large 19 MB file. Not being able to find a compatible .bin or .exe firmware file for the new version SA18 within this large download, I went ahead and installed the upgrade from apple. I then booted into Windows and using your flasher dumped SA18 onto my hard disk. I then used MCSE and patched the new firmware. I then tried to flash the newly patched firmware with your flasher, but it doesn't begin the flash process.

The command I used is as follows:
flasher.exe -d d -f SA18_Main_speedpatched.bin
(I also shortened the name of the bin file and retried it, but it did not work)

All I get in response is the following:
Devilsclaw's Reneses Utility
cmd_drive: Opening Drive: d.

Then it returns to the Dos Prompt.

I would greatly appreciate any help.

Try to shut down then restart the computer. Shutting down and not only restarting is important because on a simple restart the dvd drive still get powered and do not switch off, what it does on a complete power off of the machine.

Otherwise you could try to flash from OS X, the version posted here worked fine for me after respecting the rules I post before in this thread.

I shutdown the machine and even removed the battery for a minute, retried it, even running the Command Prompt Utility as an administrator, but still no go. After all the trouble that you went through with the Mac OSX flash, I'm definitely not going to try it