EEPROM and DVD zones

Hi,

I thought it would be possible to identify different models of
Hollywood+/DXR3 boards by reading the contents of the embedded EEPROM.

Right now, I have received 40 model reports, with 20 different EEPROM
contents. That's a lot, and I can hardly think that there reaaly are
that many different models of Hollywood+/DXR3 boards. Moreover, that
only makes a mere 2 reports per EEPROM content on average, so I guess
more are still missing.

Thinking a little more, I thought that the EEPROM may be use to store
some region information for the Windows driver. Googling around confirms
this: the current zone is supposed to be stored on some EEPROM, as well
as a counter that allows only 5 region changes. (Moreover, it is
possible to reset the counter, but only 5 times; I guess there is a
second counter to handle this.)

If we can find where this information is stored on the EEPROM, then it
becomes possible to define a mask that might drastically reduce the
number of different EEPROM contents, and hopefully make it possible to
identify the different models.

Note that the EEPROM contents of Hollywood+ and DXR3 boards seem quite
different. The location of this information may be different as well.

Reverse-engineering the Windows driver would probably work, but it would
certainly be a hard task. I think a much easier solution is to play with
the Windows driver, changing the region several times, and resetting the
counter, and using the Linux driver to dump the EEPROM contents after
each change.

I have no easily-available computer that still runs Windows where I can
try this (the only one I have is a laptop that can't host a PCI board).
So it would be nice if someone with a computer running Windows, and a
Hollywood+ board could do the following:
 1. using Linux: dump the EEPROM contents (see the beginning of
    /sys/class/em8300/em8300-0/device/model )
 2. using Windows: find the current region
 3. using Linux: dump the EEPROM contents (just in cased it changed for
    no good reason)
 4. using Windows: change the current region
 5. using Linux: dump the EEPROM contents
 6. repeat 4 and 5 until no more change is allowed
 7. using Windows: reset the counter with
      http://www.lava.net/~bhiga/HPlus/reseth.exe
 8. using Linux: dump the EEPROM contents
 9. using Windows: change the current region
10. using Linux: dump the EEPROM contents

Send all the information you gathered to this list.
Doing this, it would be nice to try as many different regions as
possible, especially if the coding of the region is not trivial.


It would also be nice if someone would do the same thing with a DXR3
board, except that I'm not sure it is possible to reset the counter...


Cheers,

Nicolas

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