:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
I saw a couple of posts from certian people saying theyve hacked theyre start up screen and vote that they post a "How To" immediately which includes links and maybe pictures...
anyone else wanna give the OK ???

It's technically already been done.

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=728

It's a great write up on the hard drive. Go to that link and read (and follow): Q: How can I unlock my drive?

The way you connect this drive to your comptuer is one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812203012 This is the missing link from the section in his post labeled: Q:Can I connect my Z1 drive to my PC?

Then follow the instructions in: Q: How do I disable the lock on my HDD.

Then before putting the drive back into the Z1, replace the OPENING.BMP file on the LDATA drive with whatever BMP you would like to (500x240 resolution).

Did you need more "hand holding" than that? Not trying to be a smart ass, but the procedure was written very well by Pulp... except for the last step of "replace the OPENING.BMP with your own".

I just thought of a better idea of how to unlock the hard drive.

If you have a laptop, then theoretically you will be able to do this.

buy one of these adapters: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812156015

1. power up your z1, and wait like a couple of minutes to make sure its fully booted up.

2. take out the hard drive, but dont discconnect the power cable, ONLY disconnect the data cable.

3. then using the cable from newegg that i posted above, connect the hard drive to your laptop.

now the hard drive should be fully unlocked, and all you gotta do now is use one of those programs that someone else mentioned to prevent it from locking again.

so could somebody please verify if this could be done?

There is a ton of information in the "Hacks" section regarding what has been tried, what has worked, what hasn't.

I don't think this works, also I'm a bit confused.

Gamezilla said:

I just thought of a better idea of how to unlock the hard drive.

If you have a laptop, then theoretically you will be able to do this.

I'm not sure why a laptop is necessary for this....

Gamezilla said:

buy one of these adapters: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812156015

I have one of these, they are very useful, but I don't think this will work.

Gamezilla said:

1. power up your z1, and wait like a couple of minutes to make sure its fully booted up.

2. take out the hard drive, but dont discconnect the power cable, ONLY disconnect the data cable.

You want to pull the drive out of the Z1?

Well first things, the drive is enclosed into the housing, you pull it all out. I don't think I would recommend yanking out the drive while the unit is running. I don't think that's too safe. Also, laptop drive's power and data are all on the same cable, so even if the z1's connection was a cable and it would extend, you had to pull the power and data off at the same time. And most laptop drive "recepticals" are not cables, but are just pins on a board. As soon as you pull the Z1's drive out 1/4 of an inch (to expose just a small part of it) the power and data connection is disconnected.

I still wouldn't pull the drive out of the Z1 while it was running.

Gamezilla said:

3. then using the cable from newegg that i posted above, connect the hard drive to your laptop.

now the hard drive should be fully unlocked, and all you gotta do now is use one of those programs that someone else mentioned to prevent it from locking again.

so could somebody please verify if this could be done?

This hot swapping technique is not something I would recommend. Even if it was possible that it might work, I wouldn't do it. For the $50 to unlock it safely like the rest of us have done and know that it's safe, I would do that.

I read through the whole thread about the hard drive (the one with like 9 pages), and someone kept saying that it might be possible to power up the Z1, and wait for the unit to unlock the hard drive, and then just disconnect its data cable, and connect it to your computer.

oh well, i must've misunderstood it or something....

but anyways, the service that you mentioned for $50, do you know how that works? do you get to use a special program to unlock it or what?

and if there is a program, could you please tell me the name of it.

So $50 (unlock) + $10 (cable) = $60 for a boot up screen change? Yeah i know i could prolly change more images also...
Once i pay that $50 unlock fee can I keep using it, or will i have to pay that everytime i connect the Z1Hdd to the PCHdd ??

doin somour reeden...

This OK?? LiL cheaper http://cgi.ebay.com/IDE-ATA-Hard-Drive-2-5-3-5-Laptop-to-Desktop-Adapter_W0QQitemZ300034986062QQihZ020QQcategoryZ3757QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Corey497 said:

doin somour reeden...

Thank God for Webster's Ebonics Dictionary :)

Gamezilla said:

I read through the whole thread about the hard drive (the one with like 9 pages), and someone kept saying that it might be possible to power up the Z1, and wait for the unit to unlock the hard drive, and then just disconnect its data cable, and connect it to your computer.

oh well, i must've misunderstood it or something....

No problem, some people thought that might work, power it up, and yank the drive out while it was working after the Z1 booted up and unlocked the drive, I suppose it might be possible, but I don't have the guts to do that and ruin my Z1.

Gamezilla said:

but anyways, the service that you mentioned for $50, do you know how that works? do you get to use a special program to unlock it or what?

and if there is a program, could you please tell me the name of it.

It's in this post:
http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=728
It's their repair station.

Corey497 said:

So $50 (unlock) + $10 (cable) = $60 for a boot up screen change? Yeah i know i could prolly change more images also...
Once i pay that $50 unlock fee can I keep using it, or will i have to pay that everytime i connect the Z1Hdd to the PCHdd ??

You pay $50 to unlock any locked drive. If you just unlock it and put it back into the z1 it will re-lock. Unless you do the "Q: How do I disable the lock on my HDD" section of pulp's post. Then it won't re-lock.

And yes, you can add other images as default images as well, but there is a 30 file limit or so.

ok, I did a little bit of research, and here's a solution I found, and it looks like it would work too:

You'll need 2 HDD for this to work. The
lock one, and one that's not locked (or if you know the password).
First you put in the unlock drive. Boot up to the bios and go to
where you can set a HDD password. Set a password. Then after doing
so, reboot the laptop and go into the bios again. At this point, the
system will ask you for the password you just set. Type it in and go
to the set password page again in the bios. This time, you are going
to change the password to none BUT not to this drive, but to the LOCK
drive. Here's how I did it on mine exactly: To clear/change the
password, I have to input the old password first, then after doing so,
it will ask me to input a new one. At this point, I yank the HDD out
and stick the LOCK HDD in WHILE THE SYSTEM IS STILL ON! On mine, it
did not lock up or anything. I press ENTER 2 times (might be
different on your laptop) to clear the password and that was it! I
reboot with the 80GB still inside and it didn't ask me for my password
anymore.

could somebody please try that and tell me if it works.

you dont really have to try it with the Z1 hard drive, just use any 2computer drives.

Gamezilla said:

could somebody please try that and tell me if it works.

you dont really have to try it with the Z1 hard drive, just use any 2computer drives.

It doesn't sound like this would work. It might but we have tried that software and $50 and that does work. I really don't like hot swaping hard drives. I suppose they might take it, but it's not worth hurting my $2K nav system.

While it is technically feasible to do the old hard drive swap trick to get an unlocked drive for free it's virtually impossible to do because you would need a laptop drive cable that breaks the power out so you can supply a constant current. All the work that you would have to do including buying the equipment would be worth well over the $50.

In addition the Z1 will not boot up if the hard drive cover is not installed. You could probably easily fix that so it always thinks it's always closed but, again, more trouble than it's worth.

And finally, the method you describe to unlock a laptop hard drive will not work in our case. The method that is described is for a BIOS level password not the ATA level hard drive password.

In the above case this password is written to the data area of the hard drive by the BIOS but it is not actually doing a low-level lock on the drive. You may not be able to put that drive in another system and be able to read what is on the disk but you could fdisk and repartition the drive.

With an ATA level locked hard drive you can't issue any drive commands to the drive (except unlock and some info request commands) and you will never be able to use the disk until it is unlocked properly.

The only way to unlock your drive from your Z1 without paying the $50:

You would have to find a way to keep power to the drive while removing it from the Z1 after it has unlocked. This requires a lot of custom work to be done.

Then using a USB interface use MHDD on a computer to remove the locking feature.

Technically according to the way IDE ATA locks work this is the only way to do it but it is not advisable.

Just pay the $50 bux and disable the lock feature yourself, make sure you have an image of the drive before making any changes.

If you willing to try this method just ask yourself if yor willing to scrap a 2k system cause without your HD the system will not even boot correctly.

I went the $50 route myself yes it costs money but insurance is always the best policy :P

Unless someone finds out exactly what A-FF Repair station is actually doing when they unlock a drive.