PhatHack DMS Tools

Introduction

The PhatHack Media Manager DMS Hack Wizard can be used to hack your PhatBox or Kenwood Keg so that it is able to use a custom sized disk. Although you can buy ORIGINAL DMS disks from PhatNoise®™, it is both cheaper and more extensible if you can do it yourself.

For more information on creating a custom DMS, please see the following PhatHack Community Forum Thread on the subject at the following URL: [1]

The DMS hack itself is formed of two parts:

1. Preparing the DMS with the hack files 2. Booting up the Phatbox/Keg with the hack files to exploit a vulnerability in the PhatBox Operating System

The wizard will perform, verify and clean up [on success] Part 1 of the hack. The files copied onto the DMS will perform the Phatbox/Keg hack when the DMS is inserted into the Phatbox/Keg after Part 1 is performed.

The wizard was created to supply a visual front-end so that the hack can be applied by anyone with even the most basic of computer skills, and also to provide the answer to the most FAQ [Frequently Asked Question] is my Phatbox/Keg patched?

Disclaimer

Whilst every effort has been taken with the Wizard and the Phatbox/Keg patch to minimise the potential damage to your DMS cartridge, it is still possible that something may go wrong. The authors of both the Wizard and the patches accept no financial responsibility for the loss of data on your DMS cartridge or any adverse affects incurred to the DMS/Phatbox/Keg if you choose to run the DMS hack.

You may find someone can help you with support at http://forum.phathack.com.

Credits

Thanks go to:

sbingner: for his tireless answering of all my questions

judb: for the inspiration and similarly tireless support

davec: for the windows port of PhatDB

pkmax: for wrapping up PhatDB nicely

SteveC: for the excerpt taken from the ‘Windows Hack Procedure’ related to the patch update on the Phatbox/Keg

The PhatHack Forum Community: for your tireless reading of my rambling posts!

Running the Wizard

To start the DMS hack through the PhatHack Media Manager Wizard, first ensure that the ORIGINAL DMS [as originally supplied with your PhatBox/Kenwood Keg] is firmly inserted to the DMS Cradle and that the cradle is attached to the PC.

1. Start PhatHack Media Manager.

On Windows XP this can be found under ‘Start’, ‘All Programs’, ‘PhatHack Media Manager’ and by selecting ‘PhatHack Media Manager.

[Note: the shortcut may vary on other operating system]

2. Select your DMS Cartridge

You can do this by simply selecting the DMS cartridge entry in the ‘Media Sources’ list on the left-side of the PhatHack Media Manager application (as shown below).

If you have more than one DMS cartridge listed, select each one to determine which one is the ORIGINAL one. If you are not sure, continue to the next stage, the wizard will verify if the DMS cartridge is the original one.

3. Click on ‘DMS Utilities’, ‘Run DMS Patch Wizard’

You can find the DMS Utilities as one of the toolbar buttons at the top of the application. Click on the button to give you a drop-down menu. Click on the menu option ‘Run DMS Patch Wizard’ (as illustrated below).

The Wizard will then appear.

4. Click on ‘Next’

The first screen on the wizard is the welcome screen, which will give you a brief overview of what the wizard will do.

Click on the next button in the bottom right corner of the wizard screen.

5. You may see the ‘Verifying DMS’ screen. Wait patiently.

The wizard is collating information about your system in order to determine where it needs to apply the patch. It is also determining if the DMS cartridge inserted into the cradle is a PhatNoise ®™ original.

Chances are that you won’t actually get to see this screen, but in case you do [or just so that you don’t feel left out] here’s what it should look like:

Take care not to attach or remove any other USB devices which windows see as storage devices, or this process might get confused. Valid DMS is attached

If you do not see this screen, you have probably already run the wizard on the DMS in the cradle and you will be ready to verify if the patch worked on your PhatBox/Keg. Move to Step 11.

6. If a valid DMS is detected, click on ‘Next’.

If a valid DMS is detected by the wizard you will now be on Stage 3 of 8 and you will see the screen as shown on the following page.

If you do not see this screen, then click on the ‘Cancel’ button in the bottom right corner of the screen, insert another DMS, wait a few seconds and then go back to step 2.

If you DO have an original DMS attached, then as the screen shows, click on ‘Next’.

7. You may see the ‘Backup DMS Screen’. Wait patiently

The screen above may flash up for a brief second, and will be immediately followed with 1 or 2 ‘DOS’ type windows. The wizard is making a backup of your DMS boot sector should anything go drastically wrong one day. The backup is made to a sub-directory under the location:

My Documents\PhatHack Media Manager\DMS Backups\DMS Boot\

It is not required for the patch to work, but is provided purely as a ‘safety net’ for you should you ever need it sometime in the future.

8. You may see the ‘Applying Patch Files’ screen. Wait patiently.

Once the DMS boot binary is created the Wizard will automatically move to the next stage of backing up/copying over the files associated with the hack.

Every time you run the Wizard to apply patches to a DMS, a backup directory is created for you on your PC. The backups are made to the subdirectory as illustrated in Step 7.

As with Step 7, you may not get to see this screen because it works pretty fast. So here’s what it looks like.

9. The DMS Patch is Complete!

Providing nothing bad happens during step 8, you’ll now be on Step 6 of 8.

Your DMS is now ready to be inserted into the Phatbox/Kenwood Keg so that the hack can be performed on the box itself.

DO NOT FORGET TO EJECT THE DMS CARTRIDGE BEFORE REMOVING FROM THE CRADLE.

If you do not intend to update your PhatBox now, simply close the Wizard. You may also close PhatHack Media Manager.

Don’t worry, once you have updated your Phatbox/Kenwood Keg when you return to the wizard when you click on ‘Next’ at the Welcome screen you will be brought right back to the ‘DMS Patch Applied’ screen!

10. Updating your Phatbox/Kenwood Keg

Insert the DMS into the PhatBox and turn your stereo ON, selecting the Phatbox/Keg as your music source.

At this point, your stereo should act as if your PhatBox/Keg is playing music, although you shouldn't hear any sound. This is normal. Leave the system on until you hear the "hack complete" announcement, or 10 minutes elapse without the announcement.

During the hack process, your PhatBox may reboot itself one or more times. If this occurs, and your headunit switches to a different source, please switch back to the PhatBox.

After you hear the "hack complete" announcement, or you have waited 10 minutes with no announcement, turn off your stereo and remove the DMS from the Phatbox after the lights have gone out on it.

11. Verifying the Patch Status? Click on ‘Next’.

Once you have updated the Phatbox/Keg, re-insert the DMS cartridge into the cradle and re-start the wizard.

If you are restarting the wizard, at the welcome screen click on ‘Next’ and you will then be taken straight to the ‘DMS Patch Applied’ screen as illustrated in Step 9.

Click on ‘Next’ again and you may be lucky enough to see the ‘Verify Patch State’ screen as shown below:

This processing is parsing the patch log files and collating critical information to verify if the patch worked.

12. Patch Complete

If everything worked out okay, then you will be at Stage 8 of 8. You should see a screen similar to:

Congratulations, your box is now patched and you can enjoy the freedom of any size disk that you care to install. [Well, within reason anyway].

This screen is showing the status of each of the individual patches applied to your Phatbox/Keg.

If the patch process failed you should see a similar screen.

13. Patch Failed or errors occurred along the way?

We can’t unfortunately guarantee that the patch will work for everyone, and in some cases it may not work first time around. Indeed on occasion the Wizard itself may not be able to complete part of the DMS update because of unexpected problems.

If an error occurs along any of the 8 stages of the wizard, you will see a wizard error screen that will look just like any of the other stages in the wizard.

If the Phatbox/Keg patches themselves fail, after Step 11 you will see a ‘Patch Failed’ screen similar to the one in step 12 above.

If the error has occurred in the PhatHack Media Manager DMS Patch Wizard, then please follow the link below and create a new forum thread to tell us about the problem.

[2]

If the Wizard has told you that the Patch has failed then please follow the link below and create a new forum thread to tell us about the problem.

[3]

In either case you should copy the contents of the error screen and paste it into the body of your post.

To do this, simply click anywhere on the text and you will find that the text has a border. Once the border is visible simply select all the text, right click with your mouse and the choose ‘Copy’. You will then be able to paste the text into the forum post.

The wizard also makes a comprehensive log of most things that it is doing, it would be beneficial to attach this to your post. The log can be found in:

MyDocuments\PhatHack Media Manager\Logs\PhatHack_Wizard_Log.txt