Thinkpads Forum

For those of you with the Thinkpad 770Z with the infamous SR8171 DVD drive that (until now) only reads CD's or "store bought" DVD's, I recently got this working so it reads DVD-R's -and- DVD+R's.

The solution is to upgrade the firmware using a bootable disk. HOWEVER - if you DO NOT have a floppy drive in your Thinkpad, some extra trickery is needed to get this working. Luckily you do NOT need to buy an external floppy drive or swap things out or whatever. One crucial element here is that it seems that a bootable "PC DOS" (not MS-DOS) disk must be made, with no CD drivers or anything else on it. So I've written this "guide" to stop the next poor soul who spends over a week Googling the answer to this problem and Googling the proper files...

You will need access to a computer that has both a CD burner and a floppy drive along with blank disks for both. The computer should obviously have Windows XP installed and working properly.

If you are familiar with MS-DOS commands, this will bring back some memories. If not, don't worry. As thanks to pkiff, I have taken screenshots of exactly what to type and what to do.

If you can't find the files you need, I've also taken the extra step to make them available on my website - http://www.nickandre.com/FW8171.ZIP Download and Unzip. You should see two files, one called DVD079G.EXE and the other is CDFWJAN.EXE.

First, download and install a program called IMGBURN, available from http://www.imgburn.com. This program manipulates "images" including the floppy image we will soon burn to CD.

Open the C: drive root folder. The root folder contains the system folders DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS, PROGRAM FILES and WINDOWS, as an example. Make a new folder here called THINKPAD. This will be a temporary folder that you can delete later.



Move those two files into that folder.



Next, fire up DOS. Click START -> RUN and type CMD and press ENTER.



Type in the following, pressing ENTER after each line:

CD\THINKPAD
DVD079G (It will extract to another directory, don't worry. Also, close Notepad if it pops up)
COPY \CABS\DVD079G\*.MOT
COPY \CABS\DVD079G\*.EXE
COPY \CABS\DVD079G\MKE*



Now, floppies tend to become error-prone over time it seems. I suggest formatting a blank floppy disk at this point so if the disk is bad, you will know right away and possibly avoid ruining your Thinkpad's DVD drive from using corrupt data. Any errors formatting a floppy will show up immediately in the DOS window. Type FORMAT A: and press ENTER.

Next, type CDFWJAN and press Enter. Accept IBM's usual lengthly agreement and the program writes the boot floppy image to the disk.



Then type in the following commands, pressing ENTER after each line.

A:
ATTRIB -H -R *.BIN
DEL *.BIN
DEL C:C*.EXE
COPY C:*

We're finished working in DOS at this point...for now. Exit by clicking X or just type EXIT and press Enter.

Fire up IMGBURN. Select CREATE IMAGE FROM FILES / FOLDERS. Then click on ADVANCED, BOOTABLE DISK, and put a check-mark in MAKE IMAGE BOOTABLE. Beside the "Extract Boot Image" text slightly down, is a little floppy icon. Click that. You are then prompted to save the image. Call it whatever you want.



IMGBURN will ask you if you want to use this new boot image for our "project". YES we do.

Click the BUILD icon. Its the picture of the file folder, a green arrow, and the CD icon. It will ask you what you want to call this final mastered (ISO) image. Call it whatever you want. When thats done, click MODE and WRITE. Choose the new ISO image. Put a blank CD-R in the drive. BURN it!

When done, stick it in the Thinkpad and boot it. PC DOS will appear. Type FW and press Enter. A screen appears, detecting the DVD drive and the old firmware version is shown, ie. 76B. Press ESC to cancel this screen.

Then type FWMKE20 079G.MOT MKEV2DVD and press Enter.

If no error messages appear, the drive is upgraded! Congrats!

Did I mention you can download the bootable CD image for this whole project?

For the lazy or impatient, download it from http://www.nickandre.com/8171.iso
Thanks guys!

Atreyu

hmmmm good to know I have a DVD+R in my A31p with the same issue. Off to look for a firmware update.

Atreyu,

Thanks for putting together these instructions clearly and for making the files available to other users.

Phil.

Atreyu,

I am very much interested to get your Iso file, but the link to your website does not work.

Please help,

Hans

If you have a diskette drive, you can update the firmware without the image. This is how it worked for me:

Download these two files:
ftp://esupport:vImvF88@ftp.gateway.com/ ... vd079g.exe
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... dfwjan.exe

Insert a blank formatted 1,44MB floppy in drive A.
Open a command prompt, type cdfwjan.exe and press enter.
Accept agreement etc. let the software extract the image.
Then change to A: and:
ATTRIB -H -R *.BIN
DEL *.BIN
DEL C:C*.EXE

Then execute dvd079g.exe and copy the extracted files in the directory dvd079g to the floppy in A:

After that, the procedure is the same as above:

A screen appears, detecting the DVD drive and the old firmware version is shown, ie. 76B. Press ESC to cancel this screen.
Then type FWMKE20 079G.MOT MKEV2DVD and press Enter.
If no error messages appear, the drive is upgraded! Congrats!

Finally I succeeded in the firmware upgrade of the SR 8171 in both my 770X and 770Z using a diskette drive.

As for the acceptance of + and/or - selfburned DVD 's I think that most if not all DVD-R are accepted.
The acceptance of DVD+R 's depends on make (quality??)

Hans