Pioneer BDR-205 - Flashing problem

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

[_chef_] wrote:

Talon_Sr wrote:

[_chef_] wrote:

Is that the output from DVRFlash -v X: ??

No, that was the output of an attempted flash with the FW file. The verbose option show almost the exact same thing. DVRFlash does see my drive and reports it as SATA and operating in Normal mode. There's really nothing else that command line will give you.

No?? Your following post shows the opposite.... :roll:

Do you see what I meant? :wink:

Quote:

Additional Drive Information

Could you put the drive on another SATA port?

Yes, I know now what you meant. As for putting the 205 on another port, I guess I could temporarily exchange it with one of my HDD on the Intel Matrix just for flashing purposes and then switch them back. But there'd have to be good reason. Could you explain how trying a different port would make a difference? As I wrote earlier, all of my other ports are used.

chef · **Posted:** Mon May 17, 2010 12:13 pm

I think you could even unplug your HDDs for safety reason and use usb or a floppydisk for the update.

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

[_chef_] wrote:

I think you could even unplug your HDDs for safety reason and use usb or a floppydisk for the update.

So you're saying I should copy dvrflash and the FW file to a bootable floppy and flash it that way? Wouldn't I need a special file to recognize the Pioneer drive in DOS? Like MSCDEX or something like that?

ala42 · **Posted:** Mon May 17, 2010 11:22 pm

Talon_Sr wrote:

command line I used: dvrflash -f F: S1014001.108

Post the output of
dvrflash -svf F: S1014001.108

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

ala42 wrote:

Talon_Sr wrote:

command line I used: dvrflash -f F: S1014001.108

Post the output of
dvrflash -svf F: S1014001.108

Reading firmware 'S1014001.108'
firmware is of Normal type (PIONEER BD-RW BDR-205 1.08), size 222700

Drive Information:
Description : SATA PIONEER BD-RW
Firmware Rev : 1.04
Firmware Date : 09/12/01
Manufacturer : PIONEER
Drive is in normal mode

Additional Drive Information:
Serial Number : ( I'm not listing this )
Interface type : SAT
DVR generation : 1014
Kernel type : GENERAL
Normal type : GENERAL
Kernel version : 0002

Status : RPC-2 (region locked)
Region : 1
Changes : 4
state is region set

File size mismatch

To save time and since I'm not an accomplished texter, if it reads the same again, I'll post "SAME"
Nothing has changed. All that you see here is what I've posted before

chef · **Posted:** Tue May 18, 2010 9:29 am

Yes, depending on your mobo/bios, it could work even the drive is connected to the SATA controller.

ala42 · **Posted:** Tue May 18, 2010 10:19 am

Talon_Sr wrote:

To save time and since I'm not an accomplished texter, if it reads the same again, I'll post "SAME"
Nothing has changed. All that you see here is what I've posted before

No, the line
"firmware is of Normal type (PIONEER BD-RW BDR-205 1.08), size 222700"
was added, which prints the size info.

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

ala42 wrote:

Talon_Sr wrote:

To save time and since I'm not an accomplished texter, if it reads the same again, I'll post "SAME"
Nothing has changed. All that you see here is what I've posted before

No, the line
"firmware is of Normal type (PIONEER BD-RW BDR-205 1.08), size 222700"
was added, which prints the size info.

Well, is it the right size?

ala42 · **Posted:** Tue May 18, 2010 10:52 pm

Here is the problem:

Talon_Sr wrote:

Drive Information:
Description : SATA PIONEER BD-RW

should be

Quote:

Drive Information:
Description : PIONEER BD-RW

The "SATA" prefix is generated by the bad Sata driver you use. Which Sata controller are you using ? Try the latest version of the controller manufacturer or the default Windows driver to get rid for the "SATA" prefix.

chef · **Posted:** Wed May 19, 2010 7:29 am

Yeah, kinda what I asked few posts back.

[_chef_] wrote:

Okay, wasnt sure about this, but yours is the SATA version.

How is it connected and set up, or more precisely, what mobo do you have and which settings in the BIOS for the SATA controller?

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

ala42 wrote:

Here is the problem:

Talon_Sr wrote:

Drive Information:
Description : SATA PIONEER BD-RW

should be

Quote:

Drive Information:
Description : PIONEER BD-RW

The "SATA" prefix is generated by the bad Sata driver you use. Which Sata controller are you using ? Try the latest version of the controller manufacturer or the default Windows driver to get rid for the "SATA" prefix.

Could you elaborate on the word "bad"? Aren't you automatically assuming the cause of the problem? The drive IS a SATA drive. Why shouldn't it be reported as such? It is not IDE. 99% of BD burners are SATA. It is just running in IDE EMULATION mode simply because the system does not recognize it in AHCI mode which is the only other option. I do have the latest driver. Uninstalling drivers meant for native devices, is a road I'm not prepared to go down. I shouldn't have to make my devices adapt for the utility. It should be the other way around. The SATA controller, as I have reported in a previous response, is the native Gigabyte SATA on-board controller. Who's making it for GB? I don't know. Maybe Silicon Image. But look at your first sentence. It presupposes that the SATA driver is "bad". How did you reach that conclusion? Let's not start shooting in the dark here. Or are you saying that the word SATA has never, ever occurred in the Additional Drive Information report before. Even with other SATA PIONEER BDR-205 models. Is that what you're implying? And even so, isn't it possible that this particular mobo enumerates and identifies this drive in this way, which may be different than how another motherboard might "see" it? I think what we need is some more testing with this kind of hardware in order to replicate the problem. Something the makers of the software usually do.

chef · **Posted:** Thu May 20, 2010 8:25 am

Talon_Sr wrote:

ala42 wrote:

Here is the problem:

Could you elaborate on the word "bad"? Aren't you automatically assuming the cause of the problem? The drive IS a SATA drive. Why shouldn't it be reported as such? It is not IDE. 99% of BD burners are SATA. It is just running in IDE EMULATION mode simply because the system does not recognize it in AHCI mode which is the only other option. I do have the latest driver. Uninstalling drivers meant for native devices, is a road I'm not prepared to go down. I shouldn't have to make my devices adapt for the utility. It should be the other way around. The SATA controller, as I have reported in a previous response, is the native Gigabyte SATA on-board controller. Who's making it for GB? I don't know. Maybe Silicon Image. But look at your first sentence. It presupposes that the SATA driver is "bad". How did you reach that conclusion? Let's not start shooting in the dark here. Or are you saying that the word SATA has never, ever occurred in the Additional Drive Information report before. Even with other SATA PIONEER BDR-205 models. Is that what you're implying? And even so, isn't it possible that this particular mobo enumerates and identifies this drive in this way, which may be different than how another motherboard might "see" it? I think what we need is some more testing with this kind of hardware in order to replicate the problem. Something the makers of the software usually do.

Talon_Sr,

I also suspect the onboard SATA controller/driver/setup to be the real issue in this case. It's nothing really new - many sata controllers, especially RAID capable ones, have issues with SATA optical drives.

I can assure you we have seen many similar issues like that and the reason always was the controller.

"Some more testing" on hardware, these days? No, actual computer parts are thrown out of the production on the market, limited testing is done, anything else is up to the customer, fixes may come if the issues are very big. That is the truth these days.

ala42 · **Posted:** Thu May 20, 2010 10:06 am

Talon_Sr wrote:

Could you elaborate on the word "bad"? Aren't you automatically assuming the cause of the problem? The drive IS a SATA drive. Why shouldn't it be reported as such?

Your Sata driver manipulates the drive id, which is not allowed. The word "SATA" does not belong to the drive id. The flasher can not detect the drive because the driver changed the drive id.
Also see http://club.myce.com/f142/lite-lh-2b1s-229601 about this known issue.

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

ala42 wrote:

Talon_Sr wrote:

Could you elaborate on the word "bad"? Aren't you automatically assuming the cause of the problem? The drive IS a SATA drive. Why shouldn't it be reported as such?

Your Sata driver manipulates the drive id, which is not allowed. The word "SATA" does not belong to the drive id. The flasher can not detect the drive because the driver changed the drive id.
Also see http://club.myce.com/f142/lite-lh-2b1s-229601 about this known issue.

Alright, I'll try one of the Intel ICH10R ports. But if it works, it still doesn't mean the driver is bad. It just means the flashing software is not tolerant of that ID change. The drive works flawlessly with all other apps including those that look at the DVD ID. And why wouldn't the dvrflash -v reveal this in the first place? It was not until I actually tried to flash with a particular FW file that I get the error of File size mismatch. And even that message doesn't indicate that the SATA prefix is at fault. It sounds more like it's pointing to the FW file and what it should be in size, not a misnomer of the drive ID.

ala42 · **Posted:** Fri May 21, 2010 12:44 am

Other apps do not care about the drive ID, they just display it. Flasher apps do care and use the ID for compatibility and safety checks. Obviously one of these checks was triggered as the file size did not match to a drive ID starting with SATA.

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

So if the software (flashware) had the word "SATA" in it would work? Again, most current drives are SATA. Is my motherboard the only one out there that reports it as SATA? No one else has this same driver on the same motherboard for this relatively new BD burner? If more users experience this problem, do you think the writers of the firmware will begin to include "SATA" in their ID check?

ala42 · **Posted:** Fri May 21, 2010 11:35 pm

I do not think that drive manufacturer will implement workarounds to support buggy Sata driver manipulating the drive ID. The problem is not caused by the motherboard, it is caused by the Sata driver you use. Every other Sata drive connected will also show a wrong drive ID. Some JMicron drivers had the same bug in some revisions, but they fixed it.

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

Ok, switched SATA ports. And yes, it began the flashing procedure. After it asked me to "Hold your breath for the next thrity seconds", it began a 10 second count down as it was doing internal flash. But after it said ...OK, it gave the following message: Could not get drive inquiry information (Sense: 02 04 12). What's that all about? When I checked the info with the dvrflash -v F: command, it did, in fact, report the version as 1.08. So am I ok here?

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

ala42 wrote:

I do not think that drive manufacturer will implement workarounds to support buggy Sata driver manipulating the drive ID. The problem is not caused by the motherboard, it is caused by the Sata driver you use. Every other Sata drive connected will also show a wrong drive ID. Some JMicron drivers had the same bug in some revisions, but they fixed it.

When you say every other SATA drive connected will show a wrong drive ID, you mean connected to the Gigabyte controller and not the intel I presume, correct?

ala42 · **Posted:** Fri May 21, 2010 11:57 pm

Yes, the driver software of the Sata controller your drive currently is connected to causes the problem. The Intel driver for the other controller should not have this problem.

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

ala42 wrote:

Yes, the driver software of the Sata controller your drive currently is connected to causes the problem. The Intel driver for the other controller should not have this problem.

OK, so before I shut down the system to re-connect the SATA cables to the old positions, I went into device manager and confirmed that I had the latest Gigabyte SATA II RAID driver, which I did have (1.17.50.02). Then on a whim (and your speculation, ahem) I decided to roll back the driver to the previous version (the one that came with the motherboard CD-- 1.17.43.05) and then rebooted. Well, I'm here to eat some crow and say that ala42, you were dead on right! The information switch on the dvrflash app now shows the device ID as simply PIONEER BD-RW sans the SATA prefix and from initial checks, it seems as though the firmware will now play 'nice' with my drive. Hopefully this was all worth it. I was successfully burning BD-25 disks at 10X (that's 11 minutes for a full 25GB) with nary a hiccup on Quantum media. I hope this firmware will expand the compatibility to other disks as it promises. We'll see. It just seems weird, how everyone tells you to update to the newest driver and this case the older drivers were more compatible. Go figure. Anyway, Ala42, you were right and I was wrong. Thanks again.

Talon_Sr

Talon_Sr · **Joined:** Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:51 am **Posts:** 30

Ooops. I almost forgot. I would also like to give you, chef, a hardy thanks for sticking in there and being patient while I stumbled around. And I apologize for not respecting your experience enough to take both of your words on the cause of this speed bump. Needless to say, I shall not make that mistake again. Thaks again chef and ala42 for your help.

chef · **Posted:** Sun Jun 06, 2010 9:09 pm

Hi Talon_Sr,

we all can learn something new any day.

brianjacobs247 · **Joined:** Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:51 pm **Posts:** 1

I have the exact same drive and I flashed it with the pioneer utility no problem...

your problem has nothing to do with whether the drive is OEM...difference between retail and OEM is only that the retail version comes with bundled software and the OEM version is for system integrators so it comes without bundled software and at a reduced price - there is no physical difference....

'data size mismatch' usually points to a mistake in the downloaded file....the firmware update utility checks to see whether the firmware file is bone fide before implementing the update...if there is any error in the new firmware file, the update utility detects this and will not continue....

my advice is download the update utility from pioneer's website once again....

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/ ... -205?tab=F

this firmware update (1.08) solved some problems with my drive not functioning so well under windows 7 64 bit... :idea:

Brian..

chef · **Posted:** Fri Jun 18, 2010 6:59 pm

You mixed up OEM firmware with OEM vs. Retail.

We didnt create a myth that drives with OEM firmware cannot get crossflashed using the offical tools - its a fact.

The Firmware Page

Pioneer BDR-205 - Flashing problem

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