I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but...

Re: I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but

Nate, CONGRATS on the new daughter...

Bob Andersen

 

Re: I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but

I'm planning a call and probably a letter to Toyota Corporate on this one. Do you think if enough of us are vocal on this point that they might actually change it?

Was this a "feature" in the classic prius?

If you actually read the notice when the car was in motion you could argue that it could be enough of a distraction to cause an accident.

 

Re: I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but

Nate,

I just discovered this thread. It's nice to see that someone's level of irritation with the legal cop-out screen became sufficient enough to warrant some invasive experimentation!

I have quite a bit of experience with disc mastering; I'll take a look at the nav disc tomorrow and report any interesting findings. I'm assuming that the disc uses an early UDF format, either version 1.0 or 1.1. Using Nero, your best bet would be to enable the "Xbox compatibility mode" option, which will produce a very generic UDF image. Even if your disc is the correct format, it is entirely possible that the navigation system's DVD-ROM is incapable of reading recordable media. I'll have to experiment a bit.

Definitely pass the file that you suspect to be firmware along to your VxWorks experienced friend! Reverse engineering the firmware is probably going to be the only practical way of turning that idiot screen off.

I'm surprised that the firmware isn't encrypted; apparently, Denso/Toyota isn't worried about this kind of attack. I would expect that there is a hash, or at the very least a checksum associated with the firmware.

In response to an earlier comment, I believe that the navigation discs do contain firmware, and when upgrading to a newer version, the on-board EEPROM is updated to match. I base this on the fact that I've upgraded my nav three times now (been complaining about the shoddy database for over a year). Each time, the dealer quoted two hours to perform the work, so each time I talked them into giving me the DVD and simply swapped the discs myself. When an updated disc is loaded, the system displays a prompt to the effect of "updating - do not turn off" for a few minutes, then reboots and happily continues telling you where you are and where you're going.

Keep up the interesting work, and I'll let you know what I find!

-Steven

 

Re: I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but

Nate:

What a coup if you could do that.

My first question to the board is: Has anyone successfully made a backup copy of the DVD and successfully run the burned copy in the ECU??

Thank you for putting in the time to test this!

I would gladly pull the stock DVD and "burn" my own copy if it would diasble that stupid message.

I recently got a dual layer DVD burner for a PC I own running windows XP. I would be happy to try burning a DVD for this purpose.

 

Re: I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but

I backed up v3.2 and v4.2. Both backups worked fine with Verbatim DVD+R DL media burned with DVD Decrypter. Other DL branded media (e.g., Ritek), well, different results. YMMV, of course, but I'd recommend sticking with the Verbatim brand.

 

Re: I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but

Someone has posted here or on PriusOnline that they successfully created an SL DVD by only copying the file pertaining to their region, and creating dummy files for the remaining regions.

 

I don\'t know if this is dragging the thread off-topic slightly, but I\'ll go down this branch anyway...

Would finding a way to remove the French-language audio "utterances" save a worthwhile amount of space?

 

Re: I got it! "I agree" killer! Cheap, easy, but

I'm not at all sure about that. However, I noted, while perusing a circa 50MB file, that it contained both French and English. Thus, any space savings would require dissecting individual files (or at least one).

So, with regard to going the SL route, it would be infinitely easier to copy files for one region and create dummy files for the unused regions, as Dan mentioned. Actually, that same process could be done for each region so one could have all regions available but on separate SL disks. I haven't done the math but I believe it might be possible to fit more than one region on an SL disk.

 

Multiple regions will fit on a single-layer disk. I use a 4.2 disc that has regions 1, 2, and 3 on it.

I've tried three brands of -R and one +R. They all worked fine. I haven't tried any RW's or DL's.

The only trouble experienced was upgrading from 3.1 to a region-limited 4.2. The region was unexpectedly changed to one that had been deleted from the disk. I couldn't get out of the "problem reading DVD" message to switch regions back. (It's in another thread.)
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(xevious\";p=\"61074)</div>

Steven, in 3.1, I couldn't copy one of the files using conventional methods, so I create an ISO image of the disk, and used MagicISO to delete the unneeded regions' files from the image before burning. This worked, so I followed the same procedure with 4.2. (I noted, however, that the file that wouldn't copy in 3.1, does indeed copy in 4.2, so maybe the cumbersome ISO method isn't needed with 4.2.)