Benq drive apparently now has no firmware...

[sa91899]

Hello everyone I am new around here and am really in need of some help.

I am new to the mod scene but am trying to learn. In doing so here is what I have done so far:

(My xbox is the newest dashboard btw 9199 I think)

I found out that about the only thing I could was flash my DVD drive so I could play backups of my games, so I started down this path.

I used Jungleflasher with a via sata pci card and was able to dump my original firmware and load 1x 1.51 for Benq and it seemed to work fine. Shrtly after that I found out there was a newer version ix 1.6 LT for Benq so I set ou to flash that firmware and actually everything seemed to work properly with the flash. It was complete so I hit Outro ATA/Reset and now when I try to use my xbox I get an E65 error


I plugged the drive upto my pc and nothing would happen. It doesn't recognize if. I try to poen the tray and it won't. it looks dead. I thought I had bricked the drive but after some searching I found that it may not be bricked after all. I read several posts that say you can recover a Benq from this state so I loaded up Jungleflasher but it said no drive was found. I had read that you can force the drive into Vendor mode so I:

Hit Benq Unlock and it failed

Hit Intro/Device ID and got: Sending Vendor Intro to port 0xDDA0 Status 0x80

It asked if I wanted to send it again and I said yes with little dots going across the screen

I unplugged and replugged in the Benq drive and it now says it is in Vendor mode

The log gave me this information:



Sending Device ID request to port 0xDDA0
Manufacturer ID: 0x0
Device ID: 0x1
Flash Name: Unknown type
Flash Size: n/a
Parallel flash found with Status 0x70

I hit Read and got: Unknown flash type Read aborted !
I hit Erase and got: Unknown flash type Erase aborted !

I loaded up the my original firmware and also tried the 1.51 that had worked earlier and either time I got: Unknown flash type Write aborted !

So at this point it seems I am stuck.

I originally thought I had ruined my drive then found out it was just a firmware thing so it could be fixed and now I can't seem to move beyond this point.

Can someone help me?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks

[CoFree]

well man are you sure its a benq and not a benq-liteon
there is a difference
a real benq will be firmware vad6038
if its a lite-on it will have a different firmware
74850c,83850c v1 or v2 or 93450c
any of the liteon drives can/will be tricky to flash a recover in

if its a benq the just doing a recover/restore will fix it with iprep
have a read over this
http://www.robinhoodsplayground.com/for ... =197&t=196" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[sa91899]

OK. Will work on that...

When I load up iprep and try to make a bootable usb, it says, "You have not loaded any firmware Please load an iXtreme firmware.

I have tried loading version 1.51, 1.61, 1.6 LT and even my original firmware and it always says, "No valid firmware loaded"

Any thoughts on these 2 things?


By the way, I checked and my drive is VAD6038

[sa91899]

Ok, so here's an update...

I have been messing around with this all day and I'm getting pretty frustrated but I DO seem to be making SOME progress. Here's what I have done so far...

I have downloaded DosFlash and Iprep. I have yet to get Iprep to make a bootable usb. No matter what firmware I try to load it gives me an error that says "No valid firmware loaded. Even with my original firmware....


Do I opened Dosflash and played around there for a bit.

Dosflash was able to see the drive but showed the same state as before. I chose to read the firmware and saved that as "Bad Benq Flash". I tried to erase and it said there was an error while trying to erase. (of course it just couldn't be that easy, right?)

I tried to write my original with Dosflash and before it writes, it tries to erase and it just hung there for more than 45 mins, so I pulled up task manager and ended the process.

I took a break for just a bit to get some fooed and started back at it. I started Dosflash and it said it couldn't read my primary sata port and sure enough I forgot that I had turned off the 360 while I was gone so I turned it on and opened Dosflash again.

When it opened a screen came up saying that since it had detected a Benq drive on the primary sata port did I want to try a magic number on it. I just clicked no and then it struck me... how did it know the drive was a Benq?? up till now no software could read anything about it. So the software asked me if I wanted to put it into vendor mode and I said yes and sis the whole thing of pulling the drawer out and then back in half way and pulling the power plug for 1 second and sure enough, it said that I had a Benq sitting in Vendor mode!! Woo HOO!!

I did an erase and the erase completed successfully.

I chose my original firmware and did a write. It completed successfully!!!

SO I closed the drawer manually and then closed the program. I noticed that it said it sent an outro to the drive and then I wondered, should I have left the drive tray open until after it had sent the outro?

So I rebooted my xbox and opened dosflash and yet again it was showing as an unreadable device...



I was bummed but thought maybe it was the outro thing so I decided to try the flash with jungle flasher since that's what I have always used.

I opened jungle flasher and it could not read the device but I was able to put it into vendor mode. Tried an erase and it worked.

I loaded my original stock firmware into jungle flash and did a write and it wrote all 3 banks.

I did an outro and it completed successfully and said that I had a Benq drive!!

I shut down my xbox and restarted it to see if the eject button would work and sadly, it didn't...

I started up Jungle flasher and it still couldn't read my drive... Back to square 0 after to "Successful" flashes.


Can anyone offer any advice or maybe caught something that I did wrong?

Any further advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[CoFree]

you will need to go into the old folder on xbins and get
hmmm i think its 52 firmware
its a older iprep so it takes a muck older firmware
no it wont load your original firmware

if you get frustrated then stop for a time
the benq is hard to brick but it can be done
so just take your time.

at this point man
i would stop trying to flash with a hacked firmware
i would make sure i had a good copy of the original dump (dont trash anything keep it all till this is over)
then using the iprep restore i would try to get it working with original games.
when you get that right then we can start the flashing process over again.

the reason im stuck on iprep
is because if you have 1 small thing wrong with your via driver and how you removed them and all that crap
the jungle will crap out every time and not work properly.

iprep is made for the via chipset with real drivers

[sa91899]

Ok, I agree Cofree, at this point I just want to get back to a straight normal firmware and then reset myself and go from there.

The thing that I am worried about is the fact I have gotten the dosflash and jungleflasher to recognize the drive 3 times so far, done a complete restore and outro'd everything says successful but then it is back to the same spot.

I will use Iprep but I am going to need some help because I must be doing something wrong cause I can't get it tp load any firmware. As you said, I want to do a restore with iprep but how do I do that without the firmware being loaded?

Hold the phone...

I followed the restore tutorial in the post that you gave me last night and it wouldn't read the drive... This was after creating the bootable usb and placing my old firmware in there backup folder etc...

It wouldn't work. I didn't try it with the .005 you mentioned above but I did it with the one mentioned in the tutorial

I will go back and try it with this version and see if I have any different results.

I know everyone is saying that it's really easy to flash the Benq drives but for whatever reason I am not having that easy time...

[sa91899]

Well, let me rephrase that... I found an iprep restore tutorial on here for the benq while I was roaming around last night. Is the the restore that you were talking about?

[sa91899]

Ok, I have the usb disk made I have booted into dos and it read the different ports 0 - 4 with 4 being the Sata Pri Master that the dvd drive is plugged into.

for port for it says:

SATA Pri Master ATAPI No identity possible

now the cursor is just sitting under that blinking. no prompts to do anything nothing

[CoFree]

man
im not sure at what point you are at
you are using iprep you need a via chipset sata card
this is what it should look like
if you are booting on the iprep boot flash drive
it should look like the screen at the 1:20 make in this vid
http://www.robinhoodsplayground.com/for ... =195&t=277" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
then at the start you just flash in withe the "r" command
like the other guide says

when you are building your flash boot drive you need to make sure it is seeing your via csata card

[sa91899]

Alright...
I went in and double checked that I was using version 6 of iprep and uninstalled all other versions, ( I had like 3 installed) I followed your video almost to a "T" with just a couple diferent deviasions.

I watched your video and went to the usual places and downloaded the same firmware that you were using in the video. (This was the ONLY firmware I could get this version of iprep to load...)

followed the rest of the windows portion of the video and then shut down and restarted. All the screens came up just as in the video but when it got to where I send the intro and reset the drive it would come up as status 0x70 start erasing and lock up the PC after 3 dots.

I shutdown and fiddled with unplugging and replugging in the dvd drive and when I rebooted, the via software said it saw a PDS VAD6038 I thought that was cool so it went into the program and when I got to the part where I was supposed to make sure the dvd was off and then send the MTK intro I just left it on or it would go back to status 0x70.

It erased the firmware and wrote the firmware and said that it completed showing a checksum.

Powered off the drive as in the video and reconnected to 360 as in the video. The video showed that your xbox booted right up, mine however went straight to an E65...

I brought it back to my pc here and all flashing programs see this as status 0x70...




I think I am done with this drive... Spent 3 days on it and flashed it multiple times where it said it was a good flash and still no good. I saw a new Benq VAD6038 on ebay for 19.99, so I may order that and try to flash it. Or I may just say screw it and just play my PS2. It's not worth wasting 3 days off trying to fix something that will not respond to what I am doing.

I appreciate all your help and will be around still especially if I get the other new drive in.

Thanks

[CoFree]

I may just say screw it and just play my PS2

OMG

ok man
just relax some
i think you are close you got a firmware to flash in
im not sure why you are having a hard time getting it to mount to the pc every time
but
here is the error code list
http://robinhoodsplayground.com/forum/v ... 101&t=2962" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
it has the wrong or a bad firmware in it.

E65: DVD Drive Error.... DVD Timeout, Wrong firmware, dvd is without f/w chip, etc. This can also be caused by the tray not being fully closed on boot.

look at your original firmware make sure it has a good key
also check how you built your firmware and renamed it

your close man
do get mad and get sloppy
just take your time

[sa91899]

See and that is just it...

Not only has the 3 different softwares (Jungleflas, Dosflash32 & Iprep/dosflas) said that it is flashed "successfully" now a total of 6 times .

Each time no matter what when I try to read it again, it is status Paralleled flash status 0x70. Also the flash size is wrong, it shows as 254K instead of 256K.

Erased and succsseful flash 6 times....

And I can only get it to read as a VAD6038 about 1 out of 8-10 times of powering down and back up.

I'm gonna take a couple of days break from this and come back with a fresh mind. As you say maybe I am missing something simple.

I do really appreciate your help on this one.

[CoFree]

with the size of the firmware that is flashed in the dvd drive i would say you are flashing a firmware that does not have a key in it.

[HaGGardSmurf]

I'll just chime in here with my experience with a few drives like this

I've had 4 or 5 samsung's come to me (hardware wise, they are close to benq's) that have had a bad flash, I recovered them, but no matter what I did they would always give e65. The flash would be successful in JF, dosflash, and iprep, yet i'd get e65.

If you have a good key, i'd just save the trouble and go buy a new $20 benq from ebay, and just be more careful when flashing, dont use the erase command. (that was the common factor in all 5 i've seen)

Seeing as your contemplating just playing ps2 instead of 360 i'd say you should just take the easy way out and buy a new drive

[sa91899]

Cofree,

I do know for sure the one I have tried 6 times has a key cause I put it in there. Now the one that I seemed to not be able to get out or flash over... I honestly can't remember now. I know I followed some tutorials while doing it but I could have forgotten that step, I don't know. In my opinion, I believe I put a key in there cause I did the flash with JF and I can remember hitting the spoof button. What I THINK happened is that I downloaded a bad firmware I got from searching google. At the time I didn't know about the firmware folders on the usual places...

What I don't understand is...

When the drive shows up as parrelled flash status 0x70 the firmware size is 254K but when I DO get it to show up as PDSVAD6038 it shows a firmware size of 256K.

How can the flash be 2 different sizes? it's either one or it is the other, right?

That's what makes me think the drive is faulty or something.