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.

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.

In Binflash version 1.46 I introduced a bug that prevented flashing of firmwares that did not provide a bootcode version. This mostly affected firmwares for NEC (not Optiarc) branded slimline drives. This bug has been fixed in release 1.46a.

Hello everyone,

I know that it has been very silent here for quite a while. But due to the ammount of stress at work I was not really in the mood for spending much time on firmwares in the evenings. Now that I’m on holiday, I found the time to work on the firmwares that I had on my harddisc waiting to be patched.

Due to some recent firmware updates containing multiple firmwares, I also had to update Binflash to version 1.46 in order to find the best matching version within this update.

The following firmwares have been added to our site:

• TDK DVDRW 880N Firmware 1.39
• NEC ND-3500A Firmware 2.98
• Sony AW-Q170A Firmware 1.74
• Optiarc AD-5170S Firmware 101B
• Optiarc AD-5200A Firmware 1.09
• Optiarc AD-5200S Firmware 1.04
• Optiarc AD-5200S Firmware 1.09
• Optiarc AD-5590A Firmware 1.04
• Optiarc AD-5590A Firmware 1.05
• NEC ND-6650A Firmware 1.43
• NEC ND-6650A Firmware 2.43
• Sony AW-G170A Firmware 1.75
• Sony AW-G170S Firmware 1.73
• Optiarc AD-7200A Firmware 1.09
• Optiarc AD-7200S Firmware 1.09
• Optiarc AD-7200S Firmware 1.J1
• Sony DRU-V204A Firmware 1.60
• Sony DRU-V200S Firmware 1.60
• Optiarc AD-7201A Firmware 1.09
• Optiarc AD-7201S Firmware 1.09
• Optiarc AD-7203A Firmware 1.06b
• Optiarc AD-7203A Firmware 1.07
• Optiarc AD-7203A Firmware 1.09
• Optiarc AD-7203S Firmware 1.J1
• Optiarc AD-7203S Firmware 1.06
• Optiarc AD-7540A Firmware 1.D3
• Optiarc AD-7590A Firmware 1.04
• Optiarc AD-7590A Firmware 1.05
• Optiarc AD-7590S Firmware 1.01
• Optiarc AD-7590S Firmware 1.02
• Optiarc AD-7593A Firmware 1.02
• Optiarc AD-7593A Firmware 1.04
• Optiarc AD-7910A Firmware 1.D1

Please note that some of these firmwares can only be flashed with Binflash version 1.46 or higher. Due to the amount of patches it is not unlikely that some patched firmwares will not work as expected. Most patches have not been tested.

I wish everyone a merry christmas and a happy new year 2009.

Binflash version 1.45 has just been published. It mainly adds support for Optiarc AD-7910A and AD-7913A drives. There’s is also an untested support for some AD-5170A drives used in duplicators.

Users of the Mac version please note that this version was compiled on OS X 10.5 with XCode 3.0. As a result this version might not run on 10.2 or older anymore but I couldn’t test this myself.

Optiarc released some firmware update for their latest 20x drives a few days ago. I added Bitsetting and RPC1 patches again. I also received some firmwares for the AD-7540A and the new AD-7590A. In order to make the AD-7590A but also the AD-7201A and AD-7201S work, there’s a new Binflash version 1.44 available for download now. While both 7201 drives should work for sure, I’m not 100% sure if the AD-7590A is going to work properly with Binflash because there were some issues on first attempt. Any feedback is welcome, so feel free to comment.

PS: Does anyone have an idea, what I could do with a Pioneer DVR-115D flash memory dump (incl. kernel)

Binflash has just been updated to version 1.43. This version has added support for Optiarc’s latest 20x drives. The AD-5200A, AD-7200A, AD-7200S, AD-7203A and AD-7203S should be supported now.

I also worked on some firmwares for these drives and uploaded the unmodified versions along with RPC1 and bitsetting patched versions. Please note that neither flashing these versions nor the firmware patches have been tested yet so you use them at your own risk.

Binflash has been updated once again. Version 1.42 includes support for Optiarc AD-5630A and (if they exist at all) AD-5633A drives. I also switched to an updated compiler for the DOS version due to a bug that I experienced in the old version.

Due to having two incompatible bootcodes for the Optiarc AD-7170A drive, I added another check to Binflash to issue a warning when trying to flash firmwares to drives that have a non-matching bootcode. Right now flashing will still be allowed but this behaviour may change in future Binflash releases.

Although this change mainly affects Optiarc AD-7170A drives and firmwares most of the available firmware files have been modified to provide the expected bootcode. Firmwares dumped with this Binflash version will be two bytes larger for most drives. This method is compatible with the way that NEC / Optiarc use for releasing firmware updates since the NEC ND-2500A drive. Please note that this new Binflash version will also work with old firmwares, so there is no need to download the firmwares again.