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Toshiba's RPC2 scheme is finally disabled! Thanks to NoJ (who finalized the job of converting RPC2 firmwares to RPC1), TheDoctor (who created a region-free, but still RPC2 solution) and many other people who joined our efforts to fight the illegal and annoying region protection. Thanks to everyone for their support! During the first week the counter on my site was above 10000 and I received tons of e-mails with support and help offers. I tried to answer to everyone, sorry if I missed some messages.

Our fight with RPC2 on Toshiba's DVD-ROMs is over for now. But we should not underestimate our enemies - they will make every effort to protect their dirty money given to them by US movie monopoloes. Be on alert! This is only the beginning...

Some history: I joined the efforts to fight RPC2 protection in DVD drives in early 2000. My first step was to disable or reset region change counters in Toshiba's DVD drives. And I succeeded in that. I 'fixed' the Toshiba's flashing utility and that resets your DVD drive region counters to their default values thus allowing you to change regions 5 times more before the drive gets locked again. It can be used on all Toshiba's RPC2 DVD-ROM drives (see an important note below) that have the following string in their firmware HEX image files:

 :20BF8000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFC1

This string is a firmware data area where the drive's region setting and counters are stored. According to Toshiba you can change region settings 5 times, then the drive gets locked and you have to send it back to Toshiba so they could reset your counter back to 5. This will decrease another counter that is called 'manufacturer's reset counter' and its initial value is 4. So actually you have 20 changes of regions available BUT with the time loss, pain and lots of expences to send the drive to Toshiba's service centers.
 
click for larger image the Toshiba SD-M1302 DVD drive is a very reliable DVD drive. It reads CD's at 40x speed and DVD's at 8x speed

the only thing BAD about it, is it's region lock!
but now it is disabled!

click for larger image
click on images for the big pictures

click for larger image

But don't beleive Toshiba's bullsh*t when they are asking you to send your locked DVD drive to their service center to reset its counters! These counters can be reset as many times as the Flash Bios chip in the drive can be re-programmed. Unfortunately I don't know the exact amount of re-programming attempts that Toshiba's Flash Bios chip allows. On some DVD drives it is about 100 times, but for Toshiba it is unknown, most likely it is the same. I read specifications for many Flash Bios chips and most of them can be re-programmed hundreds if not thousands of times. So basically you can reset your DVD drive as many times as you want. But there can be certain limitations for certain types of Flash Bios chips used in certain models of DVD players.

 
 
 

 
NOTE that re-programming of Flash Bios chip on your DVD drive is a RISKY operation that may result in drive's failure. If the drive is not flashed correctly it might stop responding to your system and could not be re-programed any more without disassembling it. During my tests I was purposely damaging firmware image to test how the drive works with different settings and in some cases the drive stopped responding after that. I had to reset it brutaly then (with a screwdriver shortcircuiting some pins - but don't try it yourself: most likely you will ruin your drive after a couple of attempts).

But I can assure you that this kind of damage doesn't happen when you just use the utility without any tricks - this is a Toshiba-made utility after all. I only removed one function call that transfered the counters from old firmware to the new one before it is flashed to the drive. This small 'bug fixing' didn't change any important functions in Toshiba's utility, so it should work as Toshiba wanted it to work, but only with one small difference - the counters on the newly-flashed drive will be reset as if the drive has arrived brand-new from a computer store. Region-locked drives obtain 5 more region change capabilities.

So if you are going to use the below given utility, keep in mind that YOU ARE USING IT ON YOUR OWN RISK and that RE-FLASHING SHOULD BE PERFORMED ONLY FROM DOS (for example after booting from a clean system diskette with flashing utility and firmware HEX image on it). Do not attempt to use this utility if you are not sure how to do it or you don't have enough experience with PC hardware and software. In this case you'd better found a more experienced computer user...

 
 
 
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES
THAT THE PROVIDED TOSHIBA'S UTILITY MIGHT CAUSE TO YOUR DRIVE!!!

All Toshiba's RPC1 firmwares (patched by NoJ) that you can find on the Firmware Pages include the flashing utility patched by me. You can use any newer Toshiba's flashing utility though. In ZIP archives available for download on Firmware Pages you will find the flashing utility executable and the RPC1 firmware image for Toshiba SD-M1302, SD-M1402, SD-C2302 and SD-C2402 DVD drives. Flashing your drive with one of these firmwares (make sure you use a compatible firmware before flashing!) will make your drive region-free - RPC1.

Important Note: The Toshiba's utility is not so 'smart' as it seemed to be for the first time. I have reports that it allows to flash some DVD drives with incompatible firmware! For example it allowed to flash the firmware for 1302 drive into the 2302 drive that resulted in 2302 drive's failure. Do not attempt to use incompatible firmware with your drive or you will ruin it completely!
 

P.S. Please note that the modification of Toshiba's utility was not a hack, but a bugfix. The utility when flashing NEW firmware into the drive was transfering data (including region settings and counters) from the OLD firmware image partially read from a drive. So after re-flashing of the drive nothing was actually changed (though it should have changed the counter and region setting). This was a clear bug, but the manufacturers (Toshiba) purposely kept it inside their utility to make US movie companies happy. This is disgusting! Toshiba and others now value dirty money and discriminating rules of US movie companies more than their own customers. This is the beginning of the end for Toshiba and all other US slaves... The good will prevail!

Also please note that this page is not against US or Canadian people. This concerns only greedy individuums from movie companies and also those ones at power (governments and secret services) who cover them. Ordinary people gave them the power that they abuse. But it won't last forever, beleive me...
 

 

 

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