The Firmware Page

Hi, apologies for the deeply tedious nature of this post but I've been searching away for a bit and made no headway.

I'm thinking about buying an external LG DVDRW drive to go with my recently bought Samsung NC10 netbook. The drive in question is http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=5CXRWS and the model number shown there is GP08LU10, although on the LG website it appears to be GSAE50L. Looking through the LG firmware post there only appears to be firmware available for a GSAH50L, is this basically the same drive (e.g. internal variant) and if so, would applying it make this drive region-free?

I would normally wait and run CDVDInfo etc to check the exact model info, but I'd rather avoid buying a drive that can't be made region-free so figured I'd ask first.

Alternatively, any tips for slimline external DVDRW drives that are USB-powered and region-free?

Any help appreciated

Cheers

Dan

@ danmorgan,

Welcome to the Forum.

Why would you want a SlimLine Drive for an external Drive? ALL Slim Line Drive are poor performers when compared to the performance of a Half Height Drive. Also SlimLine Drives rarely have any Firmware updates issued to keep the Drive current with improved performance Media write strategies. Whichever Drive you finally decide on ensure that the Drive is a Half Height Drive and not a Slim Line Drive.

My suggestion would be to get an internal Pioneer DVR-116D Drive and install it an SYBA SD-U2PLA-525 External Enclosure (http://www.syba.com/Product/Info/Id/89). Installing an internal Half Height Drive in a Quality external enclosure is cheaper than purchasing an External Drive and you will end up with a better quality external Drive. Pioneer is excellent in releasing Firmware updates and the Media Code Speed Edit (http://ala42.cdfreaks.com/MCSE) tool allows patching Pioneer DVR-116 Firmware with RRPC-1 Region Free patches among other available Firmware patches.

Regards,
Coaster

Hi Coaster, thanks for the quick reply, my typical use will be ripping CDs into iTunes, with only occasional DVD ripping/burning. As such, I'm not overly fussed about the speed and would like to have something fairly small since otherwise it will be bigger than the netbook its plugging into! As long as its region-free, then I'm happy

Cheers

Dan

Hi all, any suggestions?

Cheers

Dan

Get rid of the buggy iTunes.
There are many far better & free tools available, check videohelp.com/tools ...

@ danmorgan,
I believe my above Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:27 PM posting is a very viable suggestion for a ‘Region Free’ quality USB External DVD Burner.

Concerning Apple’s iTune software -> There are numerous alternatives to Apple’s iTune buggy software program. Below is a Web Page that provides just a few of the numerous alternatives ->

http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/10 ... your-ipod/

Regards,
bjkg

@chef & @coaster - iTunes isn't the greatest software but works fine for my needs

@coaster - It was a great suggestion, and appreciated, but I don't need the "best" drive out there, and definitely don't want one thats bigger than the netbook it connects to. I just need one that is region-free so that I can rip a couple of DVDs into iTunes for the plane/coach ride I've got coming up soon.

As such, any advice on a region-free slimline drive?

Is it possible to convert a GSA-E50L (firmware NE02) with the unofficial RPC1 firmware (NC08) in a GSA T20L?

No, they use a different boot code id. The unofficial GSA-T20L NC08 firmware is RPC2 by the way.

I wonder .... wouldn't be possible to use devilsclaw's flasher to write the appropriate core and hence overcome that problem?

BTW, as far as I remember NE02 is quite a bit newer than NC08, so I can't really see a reason to go from E50L --> T20L ... but if possible there would be a reason to go the other way T20L --> E50L though ...

IIRC the error message was a response of the drive that did not like the firmware. Try it and you will know if a flasher using the same commands to flash makes a difference.

I've got both drives, so I might give it a try ... I have to check if devilsclaw's flasher will allow crossflashing the core ... he might have put some safety checks in place forbidding this ...

If its looks promising I'll try to dump the core of the E50L and then try to flash it to the T20L. Presumably if this operation is successful, then the flashing of the normal firmware part afterwards would also work (one might hope)?

i didnt put anything to prevent it.. so be careful on what you flash..

Thanks devilsclaw I finally got around of dumping the firmware and the core of both E50L and T20L.

The idea is to crossflash a T20L into a E50L. Both have the same hardware but they have different cores.

I know the command line for flashing the main firmware, but there doesn't seem to be a specific command to flash the core? Assuming its possible, how can I flash the E50L core on the T20L drive? I was planing to flash the core first and then flash the main firmware, and hopefully the result will be a crossflashed T20L@E50L ...

Any advice please? Thank you!

well to tell you the truth I didnt think there was a difference but ala might know better then me since a Mac user was not able to flash the core with my tool. maybe it was just a fluke. If i get time I will pack my firmware into a windows updater and see how the core is flashed and if there is any difference. It might require the drive to be in safemode.

I do not know this for sure. I just expect that the running firmware refuses a core having a different ID that the current core, as the LG flasher reports an unexpected drive response when trying to flash the 'wrong' firmware. I do not know if the core or main firmware part performs the flashing of the core part and if there is a check that could be disabled.

I've found a faulty T20L drive and used flasher_con_01062010_1143AM to flash it with the E50L firmware.

This is what I get:



The dumps are created OK in spite of the "drive_inquiry: failed to inquiry drive info" message.
Then I tried to crossflash:



Nothing was flashed (no blinking, it failed straight away) and the drive is still OK.
I then tried flashing the E50L core:



Again, nothing was flashed and the drive is still OK.
Just to check that flashing works OK with the correct firmware, I flashed the main T20L firmware back into the drive:



The drive blinked, it did its thing and everything worked OK in spite of all the error messages.
I then flashed back the T20L core:



Again everything was OK in spite of the error messages.

Since I can do it at no risk, if you want me to try anything, just let me know ...

I have posted else were the message means nothing i have to remove the code that does it.. I have not because my build environments messed up right now. I just got windows back up and running last night and since its a pain I lost my Mac OS X which I have to install and then I need to get my Linux OS back up and I will resume development on the code.

I think I may just have found a huge bug in your Flasher devilsclaw: the last time I tried to force it to dump a MCSE RPC-II Speed Patched GSA-E50L NE02 firmware to two .bin files it spit out two hex files instead... What gives...?

It is not a bug at all... the *.hex files are in fact *.bin files, the only difference is the extension name. If you prefer the files to have the *.bin extension rather than *.hex, you just need to rename them as 'main_xxx.bin' and 'core_xxx.bin' and you're done!
It is as easy as that

By the way, regarding the GSA-T20L vs GSA-E50L crossflashing issues discussed a few posts earlier in here, thanks to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=46106&st=0&sk=t&sd=a, I have now found a way to finally crossflash the GSA-T20L to a GSA-E50L!

The main reason behind this crossflash is that the GSA-T20L NC08 firmware (the only one available to these drives) is dated 14.02.2007 (in other words, a rather old HP OEM firmware!), while the GSA-E50L NE02 firmware is dated 04.11.2008 (much newer retail firmware).

I wrote a step by step tutorial on how to do this in here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=46780

No bug at all, read cvs' post carefully.

I just crossflashed my drive successfully but Windows XP Pro. SP 3 still thinks it's just a LG GSA-T20L at Firmware Rev. DC03. Any advice or ideas for me to try to get Windows to actually see my crossflashed optical drive correctly...?

That doesn't sound like a successful crossflash to me?! ...

Can you post a DiscInfo screenshot?

Also, tell us what exactly have you done?

Have you saved/dumped your existing firmware first (its always a good idea since your drive seems to have a different firmware than NC08)?

How exactly do I go about posting a screenshot image...?