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langelot
01-21-2010, 02:11 AM
Here it is...

I was looking to modify the firmware for several Konica Minolta engines.
For example - we know that the old Konica 7165 is the same machine as a Minolta Di-650. The only difference is in the image board firmware. You can actually turn one machine into the other, you simply have to flash the board accordingly (there's a round about way to do it).

I any case, the Konica machine will boot up with their logo and then will show an animation of a space shuttle taking off, etc. during the copier's warm up. The Minolta will show the Minolta name and logo, etc.

All this resides in the image firmware. This is something we have determined - no questions about it.

Now, we would like to be able to add, for example a screen with our client's company name and logo to either the boot-up/warm-up sequence or possibly our own to the failure screen ("please call your technical rep." at phone number so and so and our compay logo instead of the technician carrying a suitcase).

We have tried using a hex editing program and running the .bin file for the firmware through it to see if we could make any sense of it - but so far no luck.

Does anyone out there have any experience with anything similar or know of someone who might be able to assist orwilling to take on the job.

This is for an important client, and we are trying to win the bid and get a demo machine done.

Any suggestions and advice appreciated -

Stirton.M
01-21-2010, 02:29 AM
Decompiling machine code is next to impossible if you do not have a baseline reference to the code to reverse engineer it, let alone knowing whether or not a particular hex code belongs with another chunk of code. It can be done, but a hell of a lot of time would be invested trying to work it out. You could try and contact KM Japan to see if they would provide you the tools, but I have my doubts. We've been trying to do something similar in Calgary for years. They will not budge.

That said, C360 and C452, C552 and C652, you can upload a custom boot logo to these via the firmware USB slot. You just have to have an image that complies with the specifications which are in the service manual.

I am unsure about the custom service logo you mentioned however. CS-Remote care???

blackcat4866
01-21-2010, 02:41 AM
Not that unusual.

Copystar rolled this function into the TASKalfa series CS-250ci-300ci-400ci-500ci. I've done a little tinkering with the logo.bmp file in the Falcon III firmware. I don't think this will help you, but I just wanted to say that it's not that unusual. =^..^=

langelot
01-21-2010, 12:49 PM
Thanks for the replies.

We thought about asking KM for this and haven't gotten very far with it after the prelimiary inquiries. We were told also that technically this is a legally grey/borderline area - so no sense in advertising this unless we could actually do it - many companies don't take too kindly to reverse engineering.

The problem, as someone stated above, is the "baseline" - when we put the .bin firmware file through a hex editor we can't even see any plain text characters that would show any code (even though the editor does have column to show plain text). I'm not sure if the code is in a particular format which makes it unreadable or really how to get anything to look at the actual lines of code. Obviously, either the ISWTrns program or the machine itself can either read/decompress this firmware.:confused:

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