Hardware hack required to make the Tevion HT95 multi-region
A Joint effort Project by Jeremy the Bullfrog and Tom the Cabin Boy
This is the circuit you need to build to change the settings
within the serial E2Prom
and therefore be able to set the region to either of regions 1 to 6 or to ALL
regions
you need to keep the wiring on the right hand side of the circuit
short
the I2C bus will complain if this is more than about 8 inches (15-20cm).
The cabling on the left i.e. printer cable side has been tested to at least
2 metres (6 feet)
Parts list
Required
25 pin D male connector
2 BC337 transistors
2 of 2K2 resistors (2.2K ohm) 0.25 watt or bigger
2 of 4K7 resistors (4.7K ohm) 0.25 watt or bigger
Some wire - 7 strand preferably more than one colour
Optional
Cover for 25pin connector (clamshell for instance)
4 or 5 pin PCB socket for board
(5th pin just in case we find out what ROSID is for)
A matching plug for the 4/5 pin socket
Plug dosn't always come with pins - so pins to suit if required.
Maybe some Paper clips or vero board if you prefer.
You should be able to get this all from
www.maplin.co.uk - I'll add the maplin
part codes later on
solder and a soldering iron
Just so you wire your transistors up correctly see here for pinout of BC337
Here's my attempt of the same thing for a different player.
Tom's should be neater as he used veroboard.
You may want to purchase a 4/5 pin pcb socket also so you aren't
wiring directly to the DVD logic board
as Tom has done here.
The settings are held in the chip located here on the main board
just to the left of the HT95 label
Under the wires - you can hardly see it here
The chip is the size of a gnats tes***** as it was so aptly put
Just above this chip you will see some pads where a socket could
be fitted.
One group of 4 and one group of 5
It's the group of 5 we are interested in.
They are marked from left to Right
ROSID,SDA,SCL,GND,+5v
.
The GND,SCL,SDA and +5V are what we are connecting our circuit to.
Some players thoughtfully fit a suitable connector for us - see
this Apex 1200 board
- connector at the bottom of the board in this case.
Ok you'll need the following software to read/write the e2prom chip
ponyprog
(I've no idea why its called this)
Ok once circuit is built we get down to business.
connect circuit to your PC only at this stage.
Turn PC on and boot it up if not already on.
Install and Fire up ponyprog
we need to do a bit of setup first.
First of all go into setup at the top
Now change the settings to use the parallel port and the EasyI2CBus
Interface
Next we need to select the type of chip we are programming in this case the 2404
so click device - select - I2C BUS EEPROM - 2404
You should now see 2402-16 in the first box and 2404 in the second box at the
top
Ok now plug the other end of Interface into DVD unless as per
Tom
You had already soldered to DVD player.
now fire up the DVD machine with no disk in it.
Open the drawer and leave it open - now enter the setup menu on the DVD player as well.
(In case your wondering experience has found this to produce
the least amount of traffic on the I2C bus if any at all by a player)
Ok click the read Icon top left of screen and you should be presented with the following.
OK now we need to tell the program to allow us to change some
of the data
Click Edit and then Edit Buffer Enabled
Thankfully the manufacturers of this player don't use a checksum
at all
to check for corruption of the data at power up.
So no hard maths to perform unlike some players I've come across
So thankfully we only have to change one value for success.
Its on the second line and the seventh group of two digit codes
from the left currently 02
(Region 2 - see the similarity)
(Address 16H for those interested)
Ok we are going to change this to 00 - all regions
You could change it to 01 for region 1,02 for region 2,03 for
region 3 etc etc
Ok double click on that 2 digit number and the following box will appear
Change the value in the Hex box to 00 (for all regions) and click OK
Now just confirm that the change has been taken on screen.
Now click the write device Icon top left.(2nd one in)
Ok now for the fun.
Turn the DVD player off at the mains
don't put into standby or close the drawer or exit the setup menu first.
As some players will write back to the chip overwriting your work.
Ok wait 5 seconds and turn player back on.
At this stage you can use the 1379 region hack method to see if
the region is set to 00
otherwise just go ahead and play the DVD of your choice.
You can also remove the interface from the player it would only
ever be needed to change
to another region if for instance an RCE disk needed to be played.
Apparently the all regions setting may in fact play RCE disks too.
I await confirmation from someone with the ability to check this.
Thats it folks.
Obviously you all undertake to do this at your own risk etc etc
....
At least one satisfied customer so far though
A similar technique has worked for other players,but the locations
to change
and the chip used by the DVD manufacturers varies.