From dpoch@ticon.net Tue Mar 21 02:25:43 2000
Newsgroups: rec.photo.digital
Subject: Hacking non-Olympus cards
From: "David Pochron"
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 00:25:43 -0600
Incidentally, for those who might be interested in hacking around right now,
the block of data where the ID string is stored looks like this:
01 03 D9 01 FF 18 02 DF 01 20 04 00 00 00 00 21
02 04 01 22 02 01 01 22 03 02 04 07 1A 05 01 03
00 02 0F 1B 08 C0 C0 A1 01 55 08 00 20 1B 0A C1
41 99 01 55 64 F0 FF FF 20 1B 0C 82 41 18 EA 61
F0 01 07 F6 03 01 EE 1B 0C 83 41 18 EA 61 70 01
07 76 03 01 EE 15 14 05 00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
00 20 20 20 20 00 30 2E 30 00 FF 14 00 FF 00 00
This is for a non-Olympus card, and except for the changes to be made below,
all cards have these same values. Do a search for it.
To make it look like an Olympus card, look at the second line from the bottom
and bottom most line. Notice all the 20's. These are the ASCII values for
spaces. Replace the first 7 with "OLYMPUS", skip the 00 at the start of the
next line, then replace the next 4 20's with "PAN ", skip the 00, then replace
the 30 2E 30 (that's a "0.0") with "1.0".
There should be another one or three blocks identical to the above block
further down, depending on the size of the card, usually spaced apart by 256
bytes. Do the same for those blocks as well.
That's it! That makes the card able to be used in panorama mode.
----
David Pochron dpoch@ticon.net
There is a SmartMedia ID writer by David Pochron that writes 32MB cards using a
Rio PMP 300 parallel-port connected MP3 player on a Win95 or Win98.
A Rio PMP 300 with RioDiag and Dreaming of Brazil can
repair any 8, 16, or 32MB card that is not physically damaged. Using
the same Rio PMP 300, SMCardID can then write the Olympus ID on
a 16 or 32MB card. However, the read/write timing of SMCardID is a
bit iffy. The program has timing parameters you can tweak, but it has
no guidelines on what parameter values will be best for your PC. So if
SMCardID writes a bad ID block, you can get back to square 1 with
RioDiag or DOB.
The Rio PMP 300 only handles cards up to 32MB, so it won't work for
the larger cards. (Info from Roy F. via the Olympus forum at dpreview.com.)
This message indicates that anyone with the proper USB reader can edit the header
of a SmartMedia card to make it "Olympus" compatible.
From a@123.com Mon Apr 30 21:36:13 2001
Newsgroups: rec.photo.digital
Subject: Re: Olympus Smart Media
From: "MH"
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 20:36:13 -0500
Anybody can reformat the header of SmartMedia cards to make them 'Olympus.'
There is no difference, functionally, between any of the SmartMedia, only
the headers change their operation. Of course, editing the header of the
card would definitely void the warranty so it's at your own risk.
Anyone with a SmartCard reader, not just the Rio users, should be able to do
something:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/smcrestore/
hint: For the users that have a reader based on Shuttle Technologies (i.e.
USB Cameramate, the Olympus brand reader, etc.) download the latest driver
from ShuttleTech:
http://www.scmmicro.com/
The manufacturer of my reader, Microtech International, just happened to
install the programs I needed in the first place.
Once you've installed the drivers, you'll have a program called smprep.exe
if you've got Win98/ME. Make a couple of copies of this program, for
example: smprepOLYMPUS.exe, and smprepPREPARE.exe. This program will repair
your card if it finds what it thinks is a damaged header. The cool thing is
that any binary editor can change what the program thinks is a normal
header. Just follow the instructions on the first-mentioned web page.
Search for the binary header, and from there it's easy as pie (for a
computer engineer). I've already got a SanDisk 64MB with panorama support.
Summary:
1.)Once you've made the copies, edit the binary information by searching for
the hex binary:000103D901FF18.
2.)Change the first 01 to 02 in the two locations where you found the header
and save, this will be your smprepPREPARE, don't forget to save after
editing.
3.)Open smprepOLYMPUS and search for the first instance. Do the editing
recommended by the first website. Do the same for the second header, save
your executable.
4.)Run the prepare, it will report a missing CIS header (after you choose to
do a full format), allow the program to 'repair' the card.
5.)Run the olympus version, it will again report a missing CIS header. Fix,
and now you've got a card that supports panorama!
A description of using the ZiO! USB adapter to add the panorama function, plus
screen shots of using a hex editor to change the smprep.exe file is at
SmartMedia Repair.
I investigated the possibility of reading/writing the SmartMedia card using
a PCMCIA adapter and the Flash/File software (free) from Intel. Slight
"gotcha" - it only works with Intel memory chips - but it works
well to duplicate flash memory cards for Cisco routers and switches.
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