The plot thickens...
Liggy (Admin at CDFREAKS, NEC modder, and apparent author of a private test of the crossflashing) has now pulled another tool (BINFLASH, the flasher) after a new bootcode flasher appeared which defeated the anti-bootflash protection in BINFLASH 1.25 (a feature NOT stated in the history).
This move definitely smacks of "I'm taking my ball back" and the situation appears to be getting more acrimonious by the day, with another regular who had previously complied with a request to remove BINFLASH 1.24, now completely breaking ranks - as expected, his site is now "swear filtered" in the CDFREAKS forum.
http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/ - This is a "GET IT NOW" for either
the original bootflash and BINFLASH 1.24
Or the
new bootflash and 1.25 - it appears that despite the changes made in 1.25, it is impossible to tell the difference between a "real" LF drive and a crossflashed, so this method is preferable.
If the furore over this means Liggy leaves the NEC modding arena, it will be a loss, but it appears the fiasco resulted from his anger about a leaked tool, rather than (as many thought) ultimatums from NEC.
Of course, good sense must be exercised, and if you break a drive while trying to tweak it up, trying to claim warranty on it is a sure way to have manufacturers crack down on moddability by using encryption and hidden checksums ... in an unpopular move, more recent Liteon models have extra checksums, and inconclusive firmware naming, making tweaking of some models impossible, and others difficult, at a time when their "out of the box" performance is still not really good enough, and far short of the best they can do.
Time to turn the screws onto Pioneer as well, their DVR-109 model is sorely in need of a final firmware roundup, to fix the often reported problems with 16x CAV mode... I prefer to use 8x media that it overspeeds to 12x.
PS. I leave it to the admins HERE, but the previous position (on the 401S@411S) is that we DO NOT censor crossflashing, since none of us are potentially compromised by being involved with it.
However any such crossflashing is
AT YOUR OWN RISK and should only be undertaken if you know exactly what you are doing, and understand and accept those risks.