The Firmware Page

I have an Acer Aspire 1355XC which comes with a QSI SBW242C Combo Drive
Nero Infotool gives this :

Nero InfoTool 2.07

Drive Information
------------------
Drive : QSI CDRW/DVD SBW242C
Type : Combo Drive
Firmware Version : UQ81
Buffer Size : 2 MB
Date : ?
Serial Number : ?
Vendor Specific : PUC15SB40600558
Drive Letter : E:\
Location : 1:0
Mechanism : Tray
Read Speed : 8 X
Write Speed : 24, 20, 16, 12, 8, 4 X

Read CD Text : Yes
Return C2 Pointers : Yes
Read CD-R : Yes
Read CD-RW : Yes
Read DVD-ROM : Yes
Read DVD-RAM : Yes
Read DVD-R : Yes
Read DVD-RW : Yes
Read DVD+R : Yes
Read DVD+RW : Yes
Read Digital Audio : Yes
Read CD+G : Yes
Read VideoCD : Yes

Write CD-R : Yes
Write CD-RW : Yes
Write DVD-R : No
Write DVD-RW : No
Write DVD+R : No
Write DVD+RW : No
Write DVD-RAM : No
Buffer Underrun Protection : Yes
Mount Rainier : No
Modes : Packet, TAO, DAO, SAO, RAW SAO, RAW SAO 16, RAW SAO 96, RAW DAO 16, RAW DAO 96

Region Protection Control : RPC II
Region : None
Changes User : 5
Changes Vendor : 4

If anyone needs this firmware (since i have not seen it anywhere) could you tell me how to back it up. the laptop has no floppy drive and i am running WinXP with NTFS.

do i have to make a separate partiton with FAT32 on it, then run MTKFLASH?

I don't know how to do, ask to the "Dangerous brothers" they know how to do or ask etna

I would like to have your firmware too

Acer 1355XC has QSISBW242C firmware revison UQ81

available here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mcmntl/fil ... C-UQ81.zip

Even though it looks like you already figured it out; Yes, you should make a small FAT32 partition on the NTFS drive so that the firmware backup can be written to this partition and retreived later.

Thanks for the backup even though it is useless for others since it contains calibration data tailored for your specific drive.

thanks Zombie very much for posting the firmware UQ81 link. I had had previously the firmware UX08 then I tried to flash with UD30 and nutech's U301. I was having major problems with these two firmware. Eject button sometimes didnt work and it didnt read some of the dvd medias.
since I couldnt find UX08 series firmware, I couldt flash back it. Yesterday I tried flashing UQ81 and succesfuly flashed it. Now it works fine. There is no read write eject problem. Thanks again.

Hi!

Has anyone trieb the Sony OEM FW US05??Is it any good!?

Hi, I also have a QSI CDRW/DVD SBW242C Combo Drive in my Acer 292 laptop, and it also came with Firmware Version UQ 81, I was wondering if there is a compatible region free firmware for this. Thanks

Hi guys,

I have some questions and it seems this is the perfect place to ask.
I have an ASUS L5800C laptop with a QSI SWB-242 combo drive inside. The drive is on the PRIMARY MASTER IDE channel.
Originally, the firmware was UX05 and everything worked just perfect.
One day, I decided to make my drive RPC1 and I was stupid enough to flash it with a wrong firmware (UD30) without making any backup.
Now, any cd I burn contains damaged sectors.
I just want my driver working as before and forget about region free...

So my questions:

1) Does any of you have an unaltered UXxx firmware. Please send it to me by email (miezoo@sdf.lonestar.org) or post a link from where I can download myself.
I have already searched the net and I couldnt find one

2) Some guru said that flashing your drive with a wrong firmware, affects its calibration, whatever that means...
Is this a permanent hardware damage? If I flash it back with a good firmware will the calibration problem be solved?

Thanx alot!

If you have used mtkflash for writing without "/O 04000 1FFF" in the commandline you have erased the calibration data. In this case the drive is destroyed. You can only get it back if you write a backup of your!!! drive back. The data is individual for each drive.

So always use use this additional parameter for writing if you flash other than your backup ...

eg.: mtkflash 3 w /O 04000 1FFF /b firmware.new

I haven't use mtkflash.
It was an exe from DELL with it's own flasher.

Btw, mtkflash does not work at all on my computer. I booted dos and I tried ALL mtkflash versions from your site.
I've typed "mtkflash 1 R /M a:\backup.bin" and it hangs displaying "Reading 00%...". Any idea why it's not working?

Anyway, have any of you have an UXxx firmware backup. I desperately need it!
Thanx

I think your drive is not Primary master. In normal PC's this is the Harddisc.

Try

mtkflash 2 R /M /B a:\backup.bin
mtkflash 3 R /M /B a:\backup.bin
mtkflash 4 R /M /B a:\backup.bin

(/B must not used with 1.80.1)

Etna

Oh yes, my combo drive is PRIMARY MASTER and the harddisk is SECONDARY MASTER.
I've read that some drivers need to be on SEC_SLAVE to flash properly... Well, for me it's out of question. I cannot do this.

I've tried mtkflash 1.80.1 WITHOUT /B flag.
The only flasher that seems to handle my drive is the one that came with Dell's UD30 firmware. Also, the Dangerous Brothers' U301 firmware flasher works fine. By the look of it I could say it's the same (with UD30).

Is there another way/tool that I can use to backup/burn a firmware?

Hi,
i got a qsi sbw-242 from a friend's notebook (the drive was connected there on Secondary Master). No I want to use the drive with another notebook on Primary Slave. But I didn't got it work as slave. When the drive is connected -> HDD isn't detected anymore and notebook hangs at bios detection.
So I got a slim2ide adapter to test this drive with different firmwares on Slave and Master with my "real" Desktop PC. With all 3 different Firmwares i tried, it was not possible to use the drive as Slave device in the middle of an IDE-cable and another drive as Master at the end of the cable.

I need to use that drive as slave device, because the cd-rom connection in that notebook is the Secondary Slave Port.

Is there any way to use this drive connected as slave device? Do I need a Special Firmware or is that an hardware issue? (is there a hidden jumper or do i need an soldering iron)

Thanks
Daniel

Hello all.

I have an ACER laptop, TravelMate 290LCi with QSI SBW-242 with firmware UX08. Which firmware should I use to make ti RPC1?
Although the autopatcher seems fine, I'd prefer to do it manually with mtkflash, so I just need a good firmware.

gotoh reported that he used NU 242U firmware u301 and then applied the beta SBW242R1. Isn't there just one firmware to do the job?


Thanx.

You should not use any firmware but your own. The autopatcher uses mtkflash. You can do it all manually if you want to.

@dhc014
Has anyone reported any problem with the autopatcher? Which way would you say is the safest, gotoh's or the autopatcher? I want to make my drive RPC1 without sacrificing the current functionality.
In any case I''ll extract the original firmware in case something goes wrong...

Thanx for your time.

The autopatcher.

thanx dhc014. I'll try the autopatcher in the next few days and report what happened.

It is normal for the autopatcher to take 10 mins just to read the drive's firmware? I run it just now and it's in STEP 1 for like 10 mins but the cursor blinks.

No, you must've specified the incorrect IDE location.

@dhc014
I have already backuped the drive's firmware with mtkflash so I am not wrong about that.

If you are already familiar with mtkflash then you can use etna's autopatcher manually. If you have created a backup of your original firmware already, then you can patch this file to be region free yourself using qsisbw2p.exe then you can flash the patched backup back onto your drive manually with mtkflash.

ok, I figured out my mistake...I had to press a key to make the autopatcher continue
The process finished fine. When I rebooted my laptop, in the Device Manager it said that 2 region changes remained (before the flashing that was 4). I inserted a region 1 DVD and everything was fine. I made the 2 remaining changes in order to leave it in region 2 and
with 0 changes left, just in case and then inserted some more region 1 and region 2 DVDs...everything continues to be fine.

Thanx for the accurate info guys, especially you dhc014, I appreciate it.

i've just tested the autopatcher on a QSI 242 firmware UK01 and it worked (drive is into a ECS 535)
drive info says that he's not locked.

the drive seems to work well reading cdr/cdrw/dvd ( will test to burn CD later...)

I used the autopatch to patch the drive to rpc1. The drive is at 2 changes left. When it hits zero, will it go back to five changes?