So long story short, someone told me about OmniDrive because we were talking about my WH14NS40, I got [mis]led to guides from this forum that I could flash it to upgrade for 4K/UHD reading... One of the first guides with SDFtool Flasher provided a ZIP with an ASUS and BU40N firmware, and for some reason I thought it was implied that was the ROM to use/downgrade with... Exactly what you were NOT supposed to do / avoid...
So yeah, it thinks it's a BU40N now and has a checksum to protect itself, not allowing flashing with the correct firmware! However, I later discovered I can just keep activating flash with newer BU40N firmware (I'll explain below), but anything else fails...I found the better guide, a firmware pack (All You Need Firmware Pack) next, but it was too late, damage was done... I also found a 3rd guide talking about cross-flashing, dumping the calibration data first, using another tool to combine it with the correct firmware, but I guess that doesn't apply to LG drives.
Moving on. Because I write/maintain CD ripping software and know some SCSI, I wondered if I could recover the drive myself with LG's official FlashIt tools. Since SDFtool flashed it to another [wrong] model, it identifies as BU40N in the vendor ID string, so the WH14NS40 FlashIt will exit, tell you it's the wrong drive. So I thought what if I intercept the SCSI command packet, change the string to identify as a WH14NS40 model? Would the flashing proceed with the correct firmware then??
Result:
- LGFlash.png (86.63 KiB) Viewed 488 times
Code: Select all
if ( pSPTI_Exec->sptd.CDBByte[0] == 0x12 /*SCSI_INQUIRY*/ ) {
pOID = pNID = "HL-DT-STBD-RE BU40N 1.05N";
if ( MemCmp(28, (PBYTE)pSPTI_Exec->sptd.DataBuffer+8, pOID)==0 ) {
//pNID = "HL-DT-STBD-RE WH14NS40 1.00N001600 UNIQUE1711211658MTEKMT1939 \0\0JB8 NS50";
pNID = "HL-DT-STBD-RE BU40N 1.01N";
MemCpy(80, (PBYTE)pSPTI_Exec->sptd.DataBuffer+8, pNID);
}
}
- Flashing.png (56.52 KiB) Viewed 488 times
Anything else I tried goes nowhere, it all fails:
DOS Flasher
Flasher32
SDFtool Flasher
ASUS_ODD_FW_Changer (even this)
I was thinking of selling it, perhaps someone smarter knows what to do, but I guess I'll hang on it in the hopes that after a couple more years someone will figure out how to handle these drives when bricked... LG must have a force-flasher, without all these checks/protections, I wondered if I should ask their support team, but I doubt they'll give me anything, much less reach the right engineer who knows what I'm talking about it. I wish we could get their source code! Damn.
Anyway, any advice/help would be appreciated.
