Patching The New Archgon UHD drives to allow flashing

[MovieOtterJojo]

I'm using Kubuntu 26.04 on an Alienware 4K UHD laptop. I got a new Archgon UHD drive for my 30th birthday today (October 26th). How do I patch my drive to allow flashing on Kubuntu?

[gwhitcombe71]

MovieOtterJojo, happy birthday mate... before anyone digs in, which Archgon model is it exactly, and did it ship with the enclosure firmware already on it? Also reckon you should say what drive is inside (BU40N?) and whether you've got a Windows machine handy, as from what ive seen in this thread MPTool is the fiddly bit and its Windows only (cant say for definately on Kubuntu).

[MovieOtterJojo]

MovieOtterJojo, happy birthday mate... before anyone digs in, which Archgon model is it exactly, and did it ship with the enclosure firmware already on it? Also reckon you should say what drive is inside (BU40N?) and whether you've got a Windows machine handy, as from what ive seen in this thread MPTool is the fiddly bit and its Windows only (cant say for definately on Kubuntu).

1. It's an MD-8107S-U3YC-UHD. I think so.
2. IDK, but its drive platform is MT1959, though. No, I replaced my Windows 11 Home OS on my Alienware 4K UHD laptop with Kubuntu 26.04 in September via a USB 3.0 drive I bought from eBay. Will I need to install a Windows 11 virtual machine? I do have a virtual machine in VirtualBox for installing Windows 11 on (I haven't installed it yet, though).

[gwhitcombe71]

No, I replaced my Windows 11 Home OS on my Alienware 4K UHD laptop with Kubuntu 26.04 in September via a USB 3.0 drive I bought from eBay.

i havent done the Archgon one myself, but when i tried flashing a usb gadget through VirtualBox on my old Ubuntu box the device dropped off halfway (usb passthrough got proper flaky) and the tool just sat there... ended up borrowing a mates spare Windows laptop and it went through first go. might be worth sorting a real Windows machine for the MPTool bit if you can, as the drive disappearing mid-flash is whats been tripping people up in this thread alot.

[trevbot]

MovieOtterJojo, the MPTool linked in the first post needs Windows. Starkiller suggested QEMU with USB controller passthrough earlier in the thread, but that isn't confirmation that it works with VirtualBox's USB passthrough.

We had to flash the Archgon board for our UD03 setup too. The board has its own firmware, separate from the drive, so changing the drive firmware alone doesn't fix a bridge that's blocking the commands.

Can you post the Manufacturer, Product, Revision and Firmware date lines from MakeMKV, plus the Archgon's line from lsusb in Kubuntu? Leave the serial number out.

[thesonic665]

Just wanted to post here and mention that this worked for me no problem! Thanks so much, I'm really happy I get to keep it in the enclosure.

[MovieOtterJojo]

MovieOtterJojo, the MPTool linked in the first post needs Windows. Starkiller suggested QEMU with USB controller passthrough earlier in the thread, but that isn't confirmation that it works with VirtualBox's USB passthrough.

We had to flash the Archgon board for our UD03 setup too. The board has its own firmware, separate from the drive, so changing the drive firmware alone doesn't fix a bridge that's blocking the commands.

Can you post the Manufacturer, Product, Revision and Firmware date lines from MakeMKV, plus the Archgon's line from lsusb in Kubuntu? Leave the serial number out.

Sure. Here you go.

MakeMKV:
Manufacturer: Archgon
Product: ODD
Revision: 1.02
Firmware date: 2120-12-01 17:16

lsusb:
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 13fd:5910 Initio Corporation ODD

[duromx]

Just wanted to post here and mention that this worked for me no problem! Thanks so much, I'm really happy I get to keep it in the enclosure.

Good to know you did it!
I've just read the 3 pages of this topic, and I can see that some things are not completely clear. Please some questions.

1.- Your steps you did for a successful patch please. (Same as the main instructions in the first post?)
2.- were you able to flash the BU40N after patching the inic3639 chip? Or the BU40N was already flashed?
3.- can you now rip a 4k Blu-ray (any)?

This is because I want to preserve the archgon enclosure with the BU40N inside too!

[trevbot]

Thanks, MovieOtterJojo. That's still showing the enclosure's identity, so we don't have the drive model yet. I'd use a Windows machine for the v2 enclosure patch in the first post. After that, check it again in MakeMKV on Kubuntu and post the new details before choosing drive firmware.

[duromx]

I think I read all the thread and I haven't find something similar to my following question:

Current state; I have the BU40N outside the archgon enclosure. I haven't flashed (the BU40N) via sata yet, although I believe I could.

The bridge PCB with the inic3639, is right now alone without the odd drive!

My obvious question: can we patch the inic3639 bridge without any optical drive or the BU40N plugged in?

Edit:
Success!
in the absence of answers,
I took the risk, and flashed the INIC3639PN with the INIC3639F_v157_forward_v2.bin, the only thing I had to modify was the power of USB like starkiller said; change USB 2.0 max power to "fa" and USB 3.0 max power to "70", fortunately everything went flowsly and I got the success display. Then, I could flash my bu40n, and now it shows LibreDrive enabled when open makemkv and shows my drive features.
I haven't read or write or ripp any disk yet, but everything looks very good.

[MovieOtterJojo]

Thanks, MovieOtterJojo. That's still showing the enclosure's identity, so we don't have the drive model yet. I'd use a Windows machine for the v2 enclosure patch in the first post. After that, check it again in MakeMKV on Kubuntu and post the new details before choosing drive firmware.

OK, I patched the enclosure on my mom's Windows 11 laptop. Here's the current MakeMKV info:
Manufacturer: HL-DT-ST
Product: BD-RE BU40N
Revision: 1.02
Firmware date: 2120-12-01 17:16

EDIT: I patched the firmware on my Kubuntu a while ago. Here's the current MakeMKV info:
Current profile: BD-ROM
Manufacturer: HL-DT-ST
Product: BD-RE BU40N
Revision: 1.03
Firmware date: 2118-10-24 19:34