The Firmware Page

I took delivery of the Pioneer 108 OEM a couple of weeks ago and as it stands at the moment with firmware 1.10 I have to conclude it is a "rubbish" device. If I wanted a 4 speed burner there were plenty of other choices. I don't make this statement lightly. Following all the appropriate Firmware site advice (which has been extremely useful and much appreciated) I now have a drive that burns only at 4 speed on any DVD blank media including those recommended by Pioneer to write at higher speeds. Despite Nero, DVD Decryptor and various other bits of software offering me a choice of write speeds the burn process will take anyway between 12 and 15 minutes i.e. 4 speed, how good is that???? Writing the lead in also takes too long, sometimes in excess of 2 minutes. Forget about possible hardware or system problems because I have 2 other burners to compare and used in the same system (not together). My trusty Plextor 708A burns a wide range of 4 speed media at 8 speed in about 7 minutes without any problem and my old Pioneer DVR-106D actually writes 4 spped discs quicker than the new 108. Because ALL the burns on the 108 (about 25 now on mostly -R) have been successful albeit painfully slow, I have no reason to suspect the drive is malfunctioning. I took delivery of some new Arita 8X -R (Ritek G05) discs yesterday because the site guaranteed the Arita's could be written at 12 speed on the Pioneer 108 but setting the speed to 12 X in Nero returned a burn time of 14 minutes. I think I have a strong case to return this drive because it most definitely does not write anything over 4 speed..... I would appreciate feed back from anyone having similar problems....

Not being able to write faster than 4x then there is definatly something wrong with your drive or setup. Make sure you have 80way UDMA IDE cable and the drive should be set to UDMA 4. (most other burners are UDMA 2)
Check out my tests on DVD-Recordable
And my Battle of the Burners
You will see a variety of burning speeds from 4x up to 16x that I have been able to obtain with my setup

Yup, I had the same thought.
If your drive gives really issues then return it for a replacement but I personally have no problems found with my 108, nor with my 107 drives...

As I wrote, there are no hardware issues with cables or system settings, all these have been checked several times and by replacing the 108 with either my Plextor or Pioneer 106 verifies the system is working perfectly.... The exercise has been duplicated on 2 other PC's with exactly the same results.... There are no issues with DMA, ASPI drivers, conflicts or any other system variables.....

If this is definatly the case then you have a faulty drive so RMA it and get a replacement

Think I am going to have to RMA my drive as well. Still having issues burning at speeds higher then 4x. I think it's a faulty drive...yesterday I used nero and was able to burn at 8x. The next disc I put into the drive I got the issue with only getting a 4x burn speed.
Figuring the drive is just bad. There is no other reason that it will allow 8x one time and the very next it won't.

thats the speed I got before I checked and found the drive not set to DMA in windows device manager.
But after fixing that small oversight , i get just over 7 mins at 12x speed on the cheapest dvd-r media I could get my hands on.

Something aint right with your drive dude.

BTW all im happy to report I seem to have fixed my 108 locking up problem, it was the IDE drivers, I swapped the IDE controller driver for microsofts alternate driver.
Didnt seem to effect transfer rate or anything else, just no more coasters.

Before I go and RMA this drive:

The udma setting would be located in the bios?

to set your dma
go to
1.control panel
2.go to system
3.then go to hardware
4.click on device manager
5.click on ide ata/atapi controllers

click on primary ide
go advanced settings and change the transfer mode to ultra dma

do the same on secondary ide.

bios also has some hand in the settings, but the easiest place to check the lot is working in DMA mode is look in:
/Device manager
/IDE ATA ATAPI controllers
/Secondary IDE Channel <--or whichever channel your DVDRW is plugged into
/Properties
/Advanced settings
/Current transfer mode: Ultra DMA mode

Else it will say PIO mode instead
this is for win2000, XP is slightly different, check your windows help file for "DMA"

effect,
i beat you by some seconds on the post.

j/k.

we are all just here trying to help.

Thanks to all for your tips so far but these have already been tried and tested as per my original thread.... The DMA setting for the Pioneer by default in windows XP Pro is Ultra DMA 5, this changes to Ultra DMA 2 when either my Plextor or Pioneer 106 is used.... The performance of the 108 does not change after using 3 different types of IDE Cable. The drive is set to the factory default of Master and is being used on the Primary IDE master port........ Maybe this is a duff drive drive but it is strange that it works perfectly in every other respect especially after successfully burning more than 25 assorted DVD -R media with 100% perfect playback....

What about a way of backing up your existing drive firmware, just in case !

I'd like to know how to do that !

Dave.

I have the exact same problem. (using nvidia SW ide)

I can get x16 by putting the blank cd at the last moment of writing. that is I am selecting the recoring speed in nero or image tool(use refresh button) with no cd in and then I insert a blank cd.

I hope it works for you too.

With the appropriate media I can get Nero, DVD Decryptor and other similar software to recognise the full range of writing speeds up to 16X on -R for the 108. It's just that the burn process is always in excess of 12 minutes which is typical for a 4 speed burn. My Plextor will always burn at 8X in about 7 minutes..... Even the lead in time for the 108 is far too long. It's quite amusing watching Nero claim that a burn at 12X will complete in 4 mins and 26 secs when in fact it is taking 14 mins....... There is something very strange going on here......

Well I am waiting for my new blanks to arrive before I go any further....

Used nero cd/dvd speed and tested about 20 blanks. One would show 4x-12x write speeds...then the next two would only show 4x. Kept doing this and had about 5 discs that showed 4x-12x write speeds and the rest only came up as 4x.

I either got a bad batch of blanks or these matrix 8x discs are pure garbage.

Only reason I got them was that the 4x ones I used with my old burner worked great...not one coaster out of 100 blanks.

As a last resort I transferred this 108 drive to a PC running an Intel 875 chipset which is my ultra stable no nonesense PC. This is where my Plextor resides normally and which has burned over 300 DVD's at 8 speed with very few bombs. This was an ideal test bed for the Pioneer 108. Using an Arita X8 -R (Ritek G05) and Nero (latest version), I set the write speed to 12X and it took 17 minutes to burn even though Nero was reporting a 12X burn speed..... I can only believe this is the worst drive I have ever had the misfortune to own...... TOTAL RUBBISH. I will speak to Overclockers UK during Friday to get this wretched device returned. There is no way on earth this drive is capable at writing any where the purported speeds Pioneer claim, it's a complete sham that companies like Pioneer release rubbish like this without suitable tried and tested firmware. If the drive is faulty then I would have expected some bombs or unplayable coasters but every burn (28 now) has been successful.....

So you are saying that those of us who say we can burn discs in 7 minutes or less are telling Porkies.

interesting to note how pioneer say they will release a tool to make the drive less audible during dvd playback. flashed with the 1.10 firware and noticed that my ripping speeds were reduced to 2x-3x and when i played back dvds there was no audible drive noise ie drive was spinning relatively slow. could not rip over 2x or 3x either on pressed movies.

flashed back to nil's patched 1.06 and noticed that during dvd playback the drive was spinning quite fast when obviously there was no need for it.
is there a way to throttle down the drive at all?

what i think what pioneer is doing is that they only allow slow throughput for pressed dvd discs so it does not make excess noise to distract from when the movie is being played.

To Flash,

No!!! I am certain there are those of you out there who are having considerably more success than me but there is no logical explanation left as to why my drive is performing so miserably when there appears to be no apparent fault in either the hardware or software....... You can imagine the problem of trying to explain this to OCUK and trying to prove the drive is not doing exactly what it says on the tin. I have had great success with my Pioneer 106D drive since day 1, It has burned many DVD's since it was installed without any requirement for firmware upgrades or hacked firmwares. The product spec says the 108 drive will will burn +R's at 16 speed.. Since I prefer the +R dvd blank media I was surprised to find nothing that would burn over 4 speed (and I have a good stock of quality +R media including those recommended by Pioneer). Reading the firmware pages it seems that the 108 can't burn +R's over 4 speed at this time so I consider this to be fraudulent marketing and advertising by Pioneer. And now I find it takes between 13 to 17 minutes to burn a -R 8X disc I can ony conclude this drive (my drive) is rubbish. Anyway, enuff bitchin', thanks to everyone out there for the support and advice.... I'm gonna cut my losses and get this drive returned ASAP...

>>K9P On U
All your posts on this page refers to DVD-R media with no mention of +R
QUOTE:- Arita X8 -R (Ritek G05)
and in this last post says your preferred media is +R and that +R can only be burnt at 4X maximum. This is not the case SEE HERE. Although be it just the one media I have that burns at 8x. There is no 16x media available commercially at the moment so until such times we will have to rely on patched firmware.
If your particular drive will not as you say burn at any speed faster than 4x then indeed it is faulty.
You could try using Nero CD/DVD Speed to do a test burn and the resultant graph will show you exactly how the drive is behaving.

I would like to know how you would achieve that.

12 min isn't typical for 4x burn.
You should remind that the DVR-108 uses Z-CLV as burning method.

All other points I would like to answer to were answered and very well explained earlier by Flash.

I was having great success when i first got the drive patched, i burnt over 25 ritek G04's at 12x with no problems. Then i started having problems and was getting coasters on all different medias i put in the drive. I started changing my aspi drivers, checked my dma, ect.. I found info that people are having problems burning with Nforce IDE drivers using Windows Xp, so i changed my drivers to microsoft default windows xp ide drivers and im back burning with no coasters or read errors.

If you have a Nforce chipset then i would download this program at this site.. http://mwarhead.motherboardfaqs.com/con ... ?content.5

make sure you read the instructions and make sure its compatible with your board before you try this.

BTW.. my 4x dvd-r princo's that i thought was a bad batch is now working flawlessly at 8x. All i can say is this is one of the strangest drives i've ever had.

it's more like 15mins for a 4x and the 108 doesn't use Z-CLV to burn at 4x, only 8, 12, 16