Panasonic Micro Four-Thirds Firmware limitations

mencargo

3

« on: 19 / December / 2009, 01:04:28 »

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Japanese model has a Japanese only menu language limitation
UK/Europe model has video limited to 29min59s
Japanese/US model limited to NTSC only

There has been a firmware update for all micro cour-thirds models, so I think we have the tools to unlock this limitations.

My theory is that the firmware process check for serial number or special hardware info to include the limitations.
If I'm correct, I think it would be simpler than the CHDK.

Anyway, I'm very interested in this as I have a GF1 Japanese model and love it, but I want english!!!
I'm a programmer and I have done stuff with assembler and hexeditor, but have no experience hacking code so I need help.

Anyone?

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mencargo

3

Re: Panasonic Micro Four-Thirds Firmware limitations

« Reply #1 on: 30 / December / 2009, 00:52:42 »

Trying to open .bin with IDA Pro 5.5, I couldn't find out what processor the Venus Engine V (that seems to be the same as Venus Engine HD) is.

Or maybe I should try to open the .bin directly?
I'm rusty.

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mencargo

3

Re: Panasonic Micro Four-Thirds Firmware limitations

« Reply #2 on: 30 / December / 2009, 01:35:57 »

I don't know if this helps, but all G series firmware updates file size are the same.
http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/download/fts/index2.html
8,705Kb

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Sparkie

5

Re: Panasonic Micro Four-Thirds Firmware limitations

« Reply #3 on: 01 / January / 2010, 18:58:08 »

Once you extract the 8.7M bin file you need to remove the embedded checksums.
After every 32 bytes there's a 2 byte checksum that needs to be removed before you can start doing any disassembly.

(Technically, there's a 1 word checksum after every 16 words.)

The checksum is (word1 + word2 + word3 +... word15 + word16 + checksum) & 0x00FFFF = 0.

This trivial checksum seems to be common for many of the Panasonic cameras. (At least the few that I've had a quick look at.)

There also seems to be a 32 byte checksum or hash at the very end of the file which won't affect the disassembly but it might prevent uploading modified firmware... at least until _it_ gets sorted out.

See my last post in this thread http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,2723.0.html for A processor module for IDA for the MN103.

It looks like 0x40000000 is the load address to use.

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Fernando

26

Re: Panasonic Micro Four-Thirds Firmware limitations

« Reply #4 on: 07 / October / 2010, 13:52:27 »

wow, it would be great to have a hack for the GF1...!!!

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