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DB500s clone and Gemini 4.31 on it - beware!
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There are various reports that Gemini 4.31 contained a boobytrap which operated this morning on CLONED DB 500s's that disables the box....
Folks are getting this mesage:
'Warning this has been found to have been cloned, please contact your dealer...'
Then the box crashes and becomes inoperable
Folks are getting this mesage:
'Warning this has been found to have been cloned, please contact your dealer...'
Then the box crashes and becomes inoperable
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I actually disagree 100%
Lots of people will have purchased these boxes without actually knowing they were clones.
Also some people on IHAD who had Official boxes were also victims of this!!
DMM are a$$holes.
I will never purchase another dreambox again!!
They should be boycotted by all satellite hobbyists.
Those who had clones sold to them as originals, and now ruined, should take legal action against the dealer who sold it to them, not curse the daylights out of DMM. Do you know any better way to fight counterfeiting some sort of efficiently?
However, it was bad that the original boxes were damaged too. That's indeed bad, and that's what I agree with.
Imagine if you designed something good, and it gets blatantly plagiarized. Wouldn't you be angry?
No, because that has very different hardware and doesn't pretend to be a Dreambox.
They are incompatible when it comes to software, anyway.
I'm assured that you can repair the bootloader via jtag.
It will require making up a cable and some soldering abilitiy.
I suspect that your dealer will be able to repair the dreambox for you.
Now being a none tecie what the hell is Gemini 4.31.The box as purchased was plug and play???
Enigma is available for the Mutant, but it's a completely different build from that for the Dreambox.
The Enigma team decided to support the Mutant and port their software to it. That's a very different thing from downloading the Dreambox software into a clone.
It is recoverable but you will need to jtag it.
Gemini is the actual software in the receiver.
There are various other "teams" who produce software/firmware for dreamboxes...but Gemini was the most popular.
If you can't jtag the box yourself.....ask your local satellite supplier if they offer a repair service for clone dreamboxes.
I am waiting for the dealer where I purchased the unit to contact me after he has got one to work ( he has about 40units bricked). As I am in Qatar there is no comeback on the seller.My mates Mutant 200s is working but freezes too much.
You & all the rest should combine & sue the pants off them
After all they are very quick to employ ambulance chasing lawyers to stop up supplies of unapproved kit & add ons
In the uk I am sure this would be thought of as a criminal act
After all you can buy a kit car that looks like another make & uses similar parts without fear of the main makers taking yr kit forcibly & crushing it
certainly not the innocents who bought the kit in good faith
They certainly do if that box was produced and loaded with counterfeit software to which the clone manufacturers and their customers have no rights to use. The onus is on the manufacturer and retailers of those clone boxes to write and provide a boot software that is not a blatant copy of someone elses work. All DMM have done is effectively remove their software from boxes it should never have been on, the receiver is not damaged in any way and could very easily be fixed by loading new boot software to the box. I suppose you also support the sale of pirated software and DVDs which is what you are doing here with your condemnation of DMM for protecting their own software.
To fit your analogy of a kit car then the clone makers should write their own software rather than steal it - kit car makers do not get away with pinching the intellectual rights of other car makers and putting that other makers badges on it. The badges state what the car actually is NOT just what it looks like,
I sympathise totally with any customer who has been caught out by any counterfeit goods NUT the responsibility lies totally with those retailing them and their wholesale distributors, The whole market place for many products from clothes, electronic equipment, toys, car parts and even aeroplane parts is riddled with counterfeits. Customers must start taking them back and demanding refunds after all the sale to them was fraudulent, it is then up to those retailers to seek recompense from their suppliers. Remember if a price seems to good to be true then there is almost certainly something wrong or criminal to it (with the exception of surplus remaindered/end of line items).
DMM claim they took this measure to protect their software copyright, but they have been handing their software out freely to third party developers for years to allow them to produce customised versions.
DMM claim it was only the 'bootloader' (ie. the bit that makes the box start up) that was their copyright, but that has to be proved as most of these 'clone' boxes actually come from the factories in China that Dream contracted to produce boxes for them, so they should check very carefully the terms of their licensing agreement with these factories (that is how Intel lost their exclusive right to the x86 instruction set to arch rivals AMD as originally AMD was a licensed chip producer for Intel!!)
Before anyone panics though, if you have one of these other boxes chances are you will be well aware of it, and the timebomb will only hit you if you have personally installed a particular version of the firmware for it (ie. Gemini 4.3.1).
DMM took the law into their own hands with this and, like with many vigilantes, innocent bystanders got injured by their actions.
The only part they actually laid claim to in order to justify this destroying of receivers (ie. the 'bootloader') wasn't theirs to claim as it is supplied freely by IBM to anyone who uses the IBM PowerPC processor in their hardware (which all Dreamboxes do).
The rest of the software they nicked from the Nokia dBox2 (an old cable receiver sold only in Germany), and ironically they stole an old, bug-ridden version of it which is how they've been caught out in their claims as the Dreamboxes have the same bugs!!