i tried flash with external usb casing, the same problem come out the flash fail with time out whentransfering firmware to the device.


i tried even the official firmware flash also failed with external usb.

Nice tool. . .to those who have successfully flashed their 2510a in usb external enclosures with herrie's 1.07 beta: when you scan your system after the flash, how does it show the drive? I mean is it still identified as 2510a and what is the firmware number shown?
To those who were not successfull with the flash, how did you flash back to original firmware?

I've flashed my 2500a (in a USB2 enclosure) with the Herrie Beta5 firmware, and UniFlash show it as :
Device : H:
Vendor : _NEC
Model : DVD_RW ND-2500A
Firmware : 1.07
For the 2510a, it is probably the same.

To flash back to the original firmware after a bad falsh, you can use the Nec2x00 utility under dos, but you must put your burner in first slave, or second master or slave.

It should not be too difficult to create one executable with this file so that there is no need to create subprocesses. At least if your program is written in C or C++.
My sourcecode already has a simple interface in order to do this. You just need to create a "NECDRIVE" class element and call one method for scanning, one for flashing, and one for dumping. You can even supply callback routines to process status messages.

The WINFlash program is written in C++ (MFC) and has already a separate NEC class which controls the childprocessing at the moment. Combining the 2 programs shoudn't be that hard.

I didn't use MFC to keep the executable small.
And in order to be able to compile the program for Mac and Linux, I couldn't use any graphical interface routines. Any ideas on how we can get the integrated GUI working?

MFC was mainly used for fast prototyping. A native win32 app. would be much smaller and just as easy to build. As for an integrated GUI, a true cross platform GUI using libraries like gtk+ or java (through jni) will result in large executables with huge runtimes and still compatibility issues.

I would suggest leaving your core classes platform independent and provide callback functions for any kind of input/output or status info even for your current console version.
Separating the code in this way would allow small native gui frontends that only need to implement the proper callback functions. Given the fact that the output isn't that difficult, it should be possible to create these frontends without too much effort.

Paul

I'd prefer a native Win32 app as well. I'll probably even get a GUI for the Mac version.

I just modified some of my functions and now the callback functions should be fine.

I guess most of the work now should consist of creating the GUI itself. The remaining functionality is stored in a location that doesn't matter for the calling program.
If you PM me your eMail address, I'll send you a few files and a few notes that are needed to build the program.

I've just updated the flasher to version 0.93. This version has an important fix for Mac users and some other minor changes. Previous Mac versions were probably all broken. Unfortunately I didn't receive any feedback for this platform.

Hi,

i am using a LG GSA-4120B in a Apple PowerMac G5. My firmware is 1.00.

But the newest one is A104 (A110?).

Now, i have seen on the site where you can get the Nec-Flasher that a LG-Flasher is
coming.

My question is: how long i have to wait?

When it comes out i will try it, and give you some feedback if it is working correctly - ok Liggy!

PS:
A little GUI would be nice (Nec+LG) and i think it needs time to get more popular in the mac-world!

Liggy,

Does the Mac flasher work with just OEM NEC or will it work with HP/Lacie rebadges as well. I have tried the scan function and it will see my HP 420 as being supported but will not allow me to dump or flash. I get to the warning screen and type yes then it says "can't open the scsi device". It makes no difference which of my drives I use to try and dump to or whether I have the DVD internaly or in a firewire enclosure to flash. I am surprised that considering the lack of support the manufactures give the Mac community that you have had so little feedback on your Mac version.

I have to admit that I didn't even start working on the LG version. Since I don't have an LG drive, it's very difficult to test some important things. Although I have to admit, that I didn't even flash my NEC with my own flasher yet.
But that's mainly because I have no need to change my current firmware.

A GUI is being worked on. For the windows version I have someone and a friend of mine (I use his computer for building the Mac version) already got someone for me who is going to build a GUI with Apple script.

HP and Lacie ARE probably OEM NEC drives. If the scan function lists your drive as suppported and it is NOT a notebook drive (5100/5500, 6100/6500), the flasher should be able to handle this drives. Some code in my flasher probably prevented flashing on Macs, but that should be solved with the latest version 0.93.
I've seen some people coming from two Mac sites where news about my flasher has been posted. One of them even had a small discussion in a forum - unfortunately in French. But I tried my best to give an answer about the new version.

This are bad news! Maybe in the future?

Thank you!

I hope so, but please consider that my time is limited and I have several projects running at the same time currently.
And in order to implement any functionality for LG I need Herrie for testing and he's a little busy at the moment too.

Liggy: I tried the 0.92 rev under OS X's Terminal and got the same results with an OEM NEC 2500A in an external Firewire case hooked up to PM G4 running OS X.3.5. Just found the 0.93 update and tried that. Success! I first dumped the ROM and then ran the "-flash -v -s" options using Herrie's nec107v2b4.bin file with all the "Sending", "Erasing" and "Writing" lines scrolling up the open window. It still reads as a 2500A, though. I've tried updateing the drive on an XP box when I first got it but never got it up to a 2510. I thought it was because I had Cable Select set but after setting it to Master for this last try, it still won't update. I'll try Herrie's latest but wonder if there's some other reason this won't go to a 2510. Thanks for the cross platform work.

Herrie modified the drive identification, so getting 2500 is what you should expect. There's some additional identification, but since I'm at work, I cannot test if this is shown when using then -scan option in my flasher, but you can give it a try. His v2b5 is labelled "hv2b5dlbs"

Uploaded a Necflash GUI version v0.94. Since the only changes in lower level modules concern changed needed for the GUI version, other versions will stay at 0.93 for the time being.

Big thanks to r-man for this.

Since the Necflash GUI version is official now I've removed the old prototype from my web site.

Please note that during a flash the progress bar does not always run to the full 100%. This is a minor cosmetic issue, the flashing process does succeed.

Liggy, sorry I did not use the search, probably the answer already was here
but... is your flasher compatible with firmwares from nec, tdb, nerrie...
and can I flash a firmware for examp. from TDK on NEK with another drive string ID without "Target drive was not found correctly" error?

That's what the flasher was made for. I don't care for ID strings, I just query a few Bytes from Flash and compare them with some values to find out the real drivetype.

I tried using the windows version of GUI to flash to your latest beta4 for NEC3500 but I get "error accessing firmware file"

Couldn't test this myself yet and still have to delay it for a few hours, since I'm currently at work without my NEC burner.
Do you get more info in the detail view?

Liggy,
Was able to load Beta4.bin with r-man's frontend to NecFlash with no problem. So I don't think the problem is with the BIN file.
Regards,
The Beach-Hobo

P.S. Thanks for all the great Work !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Beta4.bin does not work with the gui windows version of wingui 0.94 says error accessing firmware file