Liggy’s and Dee’s BLOG

This time we have an update for everyone who has an AD-5670S, AD-5960S or AD-7670S drive. A couple of firmwares have been uploaded for these drives – unfortunately I could only implement bitsetting on the AD-7670S firmware because basic bitsetting routines were missing on the other firmwares. The AD-5670S and AD-5960S mainly seem to be used as “Apple Superdrive”.

In order to flash these firmwares, a new Binflash release v1.48 has been released too. It adds support for the drives and also eliminates an annoying bug in the GUI versions that caused long wait times after flashing or dumping a firmware.

After adding the column to the download table two days ago, I can now provide the first auto-reset firmwares. These firmwares do not permanently store DVD region settings but provide you with 5 possible region changes each time you insert a new disc. Thanks go out to V1rtual for testing the patches.

I also removed the AD-719x and AD-722x drives from the menu and instead added a list of drives that are not supported by us because they are either OEM drives or because there’s still no information or firmware available like for the AD-7703S or AD-7930H.

I’m currently testing Auto-Reset firmwares, that only keep the region counter until the next drive reset, so I decided to add a column “Auto” for this kind of firmwares to the download table. I probably won’t add this kind of patch for every firmware – in particular not for most of the already available firmwares – but may add a few auto-reset firmwares every now and then. As of now there’s no auto-reset firmware available yet – no need to search for them.

[Update]According to the first report it looks like the region counter is already reset when you change discs[/Update]

The following firmwares (bitsetting only) have been fixed and hopefully work as expected now:
Optiarc AD-7593A firmware 1.05
Optiarc AD-7593S firmware 1.00
Optiarc AD-7910S firmware 1.D0 and 1.D1

I received this AD-7593S firmware 1.00 from V1rtual today. Added bitsetting, riplock and RPC1 patches here.

During the last few days I’ve been a little busy again patching some firmwares. If possible, bitsetting was added and all firmwares also have RPC1 versions and Riplock patch where required. Due to the ammount of firmwares that have been patched, it’s not unlikely that a couple of files are still buggy. So please report if something is not working as expected.

These are the new firmwares:

• NEC ND-3500A firmware 2.19
• NEC ND-3500A firmware 2.58
• Optiarc AD-5170A firmware 1.H1
• Optiarc AD-5200A firmware 1.G1
• Optiarc AD-5200A firmware 1.G8
• Optiarc AD-5200A firmware 1.GA
• Optiarc AD-5200A firmware 1.05 for bootcode 14 (new drive hardware)
• Optiarc AD-5240S firmware 1.02
• Optiarc AD-7200A firmware 1.W2
• Optiarc AD-7200S firmware 1.0A
• Optiarc AD-7200S firmware 1.0B
• Optiarc AD-7200S firmware 1.D3
• Optiarc AD-7201S firmware 1H0E (no bitsetting patch required)
• Optiarc AD-7201S firmware 1H9K (no bitsetting patch required)
• Optiarc AD-7240S firmware 1.02
• Optiarc AD-7241S firmware 1.01
• Optiarc AD-7241S firmware 1.02
• Optiarc AD-7243S firmware 1.01
• Optiarc AD-7243S firmware 1.01b
• Optiarc AD-7540A firmware 1.42c
• Optiarc AD-7540A firmware 1.W0
• Optiarc AD-7543A firmware 1-I1 (no bitsetting patch possible)
• Optiarc AD-7593A firmware 1.05
• Optiarc AD-7633A firmware 1.00b
• Optiarc AD-7910S firmware 1.D1
• Plextor PX-820SA firmware 1.00 (Optiarc AD-7200S OEM)
• Sony DRU-842A firmware 1.60 (Optiarc AD-7200A OEM)
• Sony DRU-870S firmware 1.60 (Optiarc AD-7240S OEM)

Please use the latest version of Binflash if you want to flash any of these firmwares.

CD Freaks published an Optiarc AD-7240S drive review on their site.

The Optiarc AD-7240S firmwares 1.00 and 1.01 have been made available for download. Included are the RPC1 and bitsetting patches.

Thanks to Jamescooley1 and budzos for their patience testing my bitsetting code until it worked.

[Update]Pulled the bitsetting firmwares since they still seems to be buggy[/Update]
[Update2]Released fixed versions of the bitsetting firmwares again[/Update2]

The routines for querying user input on the command line were not working properly on some platforms (at least Linux and Mac – probably also DOS). A fix for this problem has been released with Binflash version 1.47a.

Since GUI versions have not been affected these were not updated.

Binflash version 1.47 has just been released. It adds support for the Optiarc AD-7240S and hopefully also for AD-5240S, AD-7241S and AD-7243S drives.

Besides that flashing is done in a new thread on the Windows GUI versions. This will hopefully make the GUI a little more responsive while flashing.