The Firmware Page

Ok.. I just bought a Memorex 52Max 523216AJ-v2 (Model MRX52325216AJI-2) CDRW/DVD combo drive, and upon installation it plays DVDs, but will not even read normal cds or write anything.. I'm really at my wit's end with this. Your firmware page says the "OEM" is "SOHC-5232K." Does that mean that that firmware would work for my drive!? Because right now.. my firmware version reads "RW$3" when I believe it's supposed to be "NWK1." All of the flash files I've found are executables, so I can't even try to flash a version of SOHC-5232K because they all say I dont have that drive. Windows detects it as a DVD drive, but the driver is a generic cd-rom file. When I try to burn a cd with windows OR a software program it says to put writable media in the drive. I went out and bought a new batch of Memorex CDs just to see if it was the media. I tried switching the IDEs. I tried deleting the IDE channel. Another weird thing is, when I have my cdrom and this dvd/rw drive hooked up together the cd(master) device in device mgr. reads 0(0) and the dvd/rw is 1(1). My HDD also reads 0(0). Dont know if that has anything to do with it. God bless you if you've read this far. PLEASE ADVISE! Thanks!!

yes the memorex is a liteon 5232k, and you can crossflash it to one if you want, the firmware RW$3 is memorex and is there own oem firmware, to crossflash, visit the codeguys site, tools and firmware are there

http://codeguys.rpc1.org/patchers.html

I actually tried this.. the unscrambled set of firmware for the 5232K comes with about 6 different versions. I'm not sure which one to use, but using Omnipatcher, I attempted to patch these files to my product ID "Memorex 52MAX 325216AJ NK0J" but when I ran the patched file, it STILL gave me the error "This utility is only for LITE-ON COMBO SOHC-5232K drive." The patcher says the file was patched successfully, but still seems like it doesn't want to be tricked. Is there a way to convert these EXEs to a binary file that I can patch with through a DOS patcher??

Thanks so much for the quick reply.

binary file from here

http://dhc014.rpc1.org/Files/Combo/SOHC-5232K_NK0Gb.zip

patch it through omnipatcher and then flash to the drive with one of the utilities from the codeguys

http://codeguys.rpc1.org/utilities.html

So yeah, Flash_Utility got right to the end with the patched NK0G.bin file only to give an error saying it was unsuccessful. I tried to reflash with my backup file using LtnFW and that got 50% and gave an error. My drive is not recognizable to the setup program, so I tried to boot to floppy by starting up with a good drive and swapping out the IDE, but MTKflash 1.83 only says version info and "Port: 170, Master/Slave, a0," gives the cursor on next line and does nothing with the command <mtkflash 3 w /m rw3.bin> I selected to update boot code, could have been the problem, I don't know.

Going to try XSF, otherwise, a new drive?

command line should be

mtkflash 3 w /m NK0G.bin

RW3.bin is the backup firmware file I made before I did any flashing, I was trying to get it back to normal. The only other working drive I have is a normal cd-rom, so I start up with the cdrom on secondary master, boot to floppy, then switch the IDE to the Memorex drive, but whatever command I run no matter which file, it just freezes after saying Port 170, Mastet/Slave, a0. I used XSF the same way, and it sees a drive, but has a big number 27 on the top and says "Could not enter flash mode". I have a feeling this drive doesn't support serial flashing.

OK, so I interrupted the command that froze (Ctrl-shift-Pause/break), and MTKFlash gave the response "Invalid request writing device PRN." Ran XSF again <XSF 3 w NK0G.bin> and noticed before it went to it's GUI, gave a response "No PCI 9050 serial chip." So I think my fears have been confirmed, this drive does NOT support serial flashing. Now if I could only trick Windows into letting me flash this drive.. Maybe if I had a functional DVD/CD-RW drive handy I could switch the IDE's in Windows because the flash utilities only recognize these types of drives, not my normal cd drive. Would that work, or would the utilities still give errors saying the device ID doesn't match?

Gosh, I'm sick of all this.. I wish XP supported my drive in the first place. What a waste.

Thanks so much for your assistance, Astra. I think this one's dead in the water. I wonder what went wrong with the NK0G.bin flash using Flash_Utility! I unzipped the unscrambled file you gave to the desktop, Omnipatched to the desktop, and ran Flash_Utility from the desktop, so my files were clean.

maybe try with an earlier version of mtkflash

I tried version 1.55.. It seems pretty obvious if XSF says "No PCI 9050 serial chip" that the drive isn't serial flashable. One time instead of the error "Invalid request writing device PRN" mtkflash gave something like '[...]70 should be 90.' I've read lots of forums, and one guy with a dead drive said mtk didnt work, but XSF did. Both give me errors, so I'm at a loss, I suppose.