Ma petite entreprise

As the Mac-enabled version was not available in a store near me, I decide to try to upgrade the 810-UL to a 810-UL/T, as I supposed the difference to be mainly due to the firmware version (I know that the 810-UL and 810-UL both sport a DRU-810UA, which is itself a rebranded BenQ DW1840). And actually, if you go to Sony Support page, and look at the firmware versions for 810-UL and 810-UL/T, you will see that the 810-UL has a firmware version of 2.0, while the 810-UL/T has a firmware version of 3.0.

So my first idea was simply to download Sony's 810-UL/T 3.0D Mac firmware updater, and try it on my 810-UL. Then, after trying to run the application, I saw that Sony added a software check that prevented from updating the 810-UL firmware to the 810-UL/T firmware. Basically, you select the 810-UL burner (displayed as DRU-810A), and the "Flash" button stays disabled, while a "This drive is not allowed to be updated" message is displayed.

After some trying hexediting the binary to bypass the check, with no success, I decided to edit what I could, and try to hack the NIB file located in the patcher application content. This can be done quite easily with Apple Interface Builder (comes with the developer tools), and I followed the very simple strategy that consists in adding a new enabled bypass' button, and to bind it to the flashDrive: action offered by the application UIController (this is actually the trigger to start the flashing).

The NIB file saved, I restarted the updater, and oh ! here is a clickable "bypass" button that will allow to update the drive without any problem - as simple as that. I do not make the patched version available for legal reasons, but everbody who has a Mac with developer tools should be able to make this very simple patch.

For reference, here are the steps :

• Right-click on the Flash Program for SONY application and select Display package contents
• Go into the Contents/Resources/English.lproj folder and open the MainMenu.nib
• Once Interface Builder is started, drag a button from the widgets palette onto the man window. Name it as you want.
• Now, hold the Control key and click and hold on your new button
• Drop the appearing connector onto the UIController on the palette below
• Now the inspector should show up, display the Target/Actions tab and click on the flashDrive: action, then on connect.
• Save your NIB file
• You're ready to update your drive !

Isn't that simple ?