Liteon 52x burner only burns at 16x
 

Hi,

I recently got a new Liteon 52x24x52x cd-rw drive and it initially worked
flawlessly. I'm currently on a spindle of 40x certified media, and the
drive, while refusing to burn at 48x or 52x, always burned at 40x. However,
suddenly I find that on the same media, it refuses to burn at anything above
16x. My other liteon burner, a 24x drive, has no problem burning 24x on this
media.

I'm not sure what's happened here. I did flash from the 6S0D firmware it
came with to the 6S0F. I'm not sure if the change in burn speed occurred
with the flash or not, but it's currently my best guess. However, after
managing to find a copy of the 6S0D firmware, it refuses to flash my drive
as it claims to be compatible only with liteon drives containing pre-6S0D
firmware installed.

Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other explanation as
to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

Thanks,
Ric

"Ric" wrote in message
...
Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other explanation
as
to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

Just overwrite the current firmware with an older version.
As for the burning...i think the software examines the media it writes to,
then decides what is the best burning speed for that blank.

I also noticed that my Plextor Premium would extract audio from pressed
discs slower then i had other discs, it varied from CD to CD.

The same rule might apply to recording media.

The problem is the liteon's firmware program will not allow you to downgrade
a firmware, only upgrade. However, I found the solution. There's a little
utility he http://digi.rpc1.org/flashfix.htm that will patch the firmware
program to prevent it from actually checking what's in the drive. This makes
it somewhat more dangerous (you could flash your drive with an incompatible
firmware or accidentally flash the wrong drive) but if you're careful will
let you downgrade your firmware (or flash a rebranded liteon with the liteon
firmware or vice-versa).

Incidentally, after downgrading my firmware to the earlier one, it now once
again burns the same media at 40x with no incident. There's not much info on
the new firmware other than it's supposed to improve overburning. I believe
it may improve compatibility with 90 or 99 min media, but seems to have
affected compatibility with (at least some) slower media. Since I very
rarely overburn I'll just stick with the previous version.

Ric

"Richard Dower" wrote in message
...

"Ric" wrote in message
...
Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other
explanation
as
to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

Just overwrite the current firmware with an older version.
As for the burning...i think the software examines the media it writes to,
then decides what is the best burning speed for that blank.

I also noticed that my Plextor Premium would extract audio from pressed
discs slower then i had other discs, it varied from CD to CD.

The same rule might apply to recording media.

You haven't provided enough information to get proper assistance. What does
"refuses to burn" mean? Do you get options for 48x burn speed or not? If so,
what happens when you do try to burn at 48x? What media are you using? Have
you checked the ATIP to see what it really is? Download SmartBurn Media
Checker from LiteOn to check your media. I also suggest that you get some
true 48x media like TDK or Fuji, many brands say 40x when they are not
really 40x media.


"Ric" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I recently got a new Liteon 52x24x52x cd-rw drive and it initially worked
flawlessly. I'm currently on a spindle of 40x certified media, and the
drive, while refusing to burn at 48x or 52x, always burned at 40x.
However,
suddenly I find that on the same media, it refuses to burn at anything
above
16x. My other liteon burner, a 24x drive, has no problem burning 24x on
this
media.

I'm not sure what's happened here. I did flash from the 6S0D firmware it
came with to the 6S0F. I'm not sure if the change in burn speed occurred
with the flash or not, but it's currently my best guess. However, after
managing to find a copy of the 6S0D firmware, it refuses to flash my drive
as it claims to be compatible only with liteon drives containing pre-6S0D
firmware installed.

Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other explanation
as
to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

Thanks,
Ric

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:09:06 -0400, "Ric" wrote:

Hi,

I recently got a new Liteon 52x24x52x cd-rw drive and it initially worked
flawlessly. I'm currently on a spindle of 40x certified media, and the
drive, while refusing to burn at 48x or 52x, always burned at 40x. However,
suddenly I find that on the same media, it refuses to burn at anything above
16x. My other liteon burner, a 24x drive, has no problem burning 24x on this
media.

I'm not sure what's happened here. I did flash from the 6S0D firmware it
came with to the 6S0F. I'm not sure if the change in burn speed occurred
with the flash or not, but it's currently my best guess. However, after
managing to find a copy of the 6S0D firmware, it refuses to flash my drive
as it claims to be compatible only with liteon drives containing pre-6S0D
firmware installed.

Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other explanation as
to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

Thanks,
Ric

My Lite-On 52x24x52x cd-rw drive is acting the same way yours is. Mine is
older, bought in January 2003. The Firmware revision is 6S08. Odd that it is
not in the letter sequence you mentioned. Since I have not made any changes to
the firmware, I can't attribute the slowness to that. But for now, I am using
12X (Maybe 16 would work) for my CD-Rs. Also odd is that it can burn CD R/W at
24X. I wonder if it could have anything to do with the tropical humidity we
have been having here in Connecticut?

-----------

Remove "not" for return address.

Have you ever been able to burn faster? Have you changed your media type?
There are clearly media compatibility differences between different firmware
versions, so I suggest you download 6S0D from their website
(www.liteonit.com) and see if that helps. Actually, you can't get it from
their website, they've only got a link to 6S0F, which I found was less
compatible with my media than 6S0D. But you can get it with this link:
http://www.liteonit.com/webfw/LTR-52246S/R526S0D.zip

Now if you're using media that's only rated for low speed, there may be
nothing you can do. In my case the media I'm using at the moment is 40x and
the liteon will not write faster than 40x to it (the faster speeds don't
even show up in the Nero settings when the media is inserted into the
drive). This is probably a good thing as it insures a good quality burn. I'm
using slower media because that's what I had around before I bought the new
drive. My older drive is only 24x so the 40x media was more than sufficient.
Once my spindle runs out I'm planning to only by 48x or better certified
media.

Good luck,
Ric

"Bob M" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:09:06 -0400, "Ric" wrote:

Hi,

I recently got a new Liteon 52x24x52x cd-rw drive and it initially worked
flawlessly. I'm currently on a spindle of 40x certified media, and the
drive, while refusing to burn at 48x or 52x, always burned at 40x.
However,
suddenly I find that on the same media, it refuses to burn at anything
above
16x. My other liteon burner, a 24x drive, has no problem burning 24x on
this
media.

I'm not sure what's happened here. I did flash from the 6S0D firmware it
came with to the 6S0F. I'm not sure if the change in burn speed occurred
with the flash or not, but it's currently my best guess. However, after
managing to find a copy of the 6S0D firmware, it refuses to flash my
drive
as it claims to be compatible only with liteon drives containing pre-6S0D
firmware installed.

Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other explanation
as
to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

Thanks,
Ric

My Lite-On 52x24x52x cd-rw drive is acting the same way yours is. Mine is
older, bought in January 2003. The Firmware revision is 6S08. Odd that it
is
not in the letter sequence you mentioned. Since I have not made any
changes to
the firmware, I can't attribute the slowness to that. But for now, I am
using
12X (Maybe 16 would work) for my CD-Rs. Also odd is that it can burn CD
R/W at
24X. I wonder if it could have anything to do with the tropical humidity
we
have been having here in Connecticut?

-----------

Remove "not" for return address.

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In article ,
Bob M wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:09:06 -0400, "Ric" wrote:
I recently got a new Liteon 52x24x52x cd-rw drive and it initially worked
flawlessly. I'm currently on a spindle of 40x certified media, and the
drive, while refusing to burn at 48x or 52x, always burned at 40x. However,
suddenly I find that on the same media, it refuses to burn at anything above
16x. My other liteon burner, a 24x drive, has no problem burning 24x on this
media.

I'm not sure what's happened here. I did flash from the 6S0D firmware it
came with to the 6S0F. I'm not sure if the change in burn speed occurred
with the flash or not, but it's currently my best guess. However, after
managing to find a copy of the 6S0D firmware, it refuses to flash my drive
as it claims to be compatible only with liteon drives containing pre-6S0D
firmware installed.

Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other explanation as
to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

My Lite-On 52x24x52x cd-rw drive is acting the same way yours is. Mine is
older, bought in January 2003. The Firmware revision is 6S08. Odd that it is
not in the letter sequence you mentioned. Since I have not made any changes to
the firmware, I can't attribute the slowness to that. But for now, I am using
12X (Maybe 16 would work) for my CD-Rs.

In one of my work machines, I have a Pacific Digital (relabeled Liteon
LTR-48125W) 48x12x48 burner. At first, WinXP refused to talk to it in DMA
mode, so burns were slow and hogged the processor. I found a utility to
apply Liteon firmware updates to it...the first one was the latest available
at the time. I still didn't get DMA from it. After that, I "downgraded" it
to VS0D and now DMA works.

The same machine also has a (retail-boxed) Liteon LTD163D DVD-ROM drive.
Updating that to the newest firmware killed DMA. "Downgrading" it back to
GHR3 restored DMA.

I suspect that the recent firmware "updates" are breaking more things than
they fix. If you do a little searching of the firmware sites, you should be
able to find the software that lets you force-apply any Liteon firmware to
any Liteon (retail or rebadged) drive. I'd name names, but I deleted the
software and firmware files after getting my drives working properly.

(If it makes any differece, the machine with these drives is a dual Athlon
MP 1900 on a Tyan S2466N-4M, running WinXP Pro SP1. Running the
Microsoft-supplied IDE driver or the AMD 768 IDE driver made no difference.)

_/_ Scott Alfter
/ v \
(IIGS( http://alfter.us Top-posting!
\_^_/ pkill -9 /bin/laden What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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In article , Dan G top-posted
(grr):
"Scott Alfter" wrote in message
news:KpATa.14697$Bp2.730@fed1read07...
In one of my work machines, I have a Pacific Digital (relabeled Liteon
LTR-48125W) 48x12x48 burner. At first, WinXP refused to talk to it in DMA
mode...

Your problem would have as easily been solved by uninstalling the IDE
controller and rebooting, which forces XP to re-install - the same as a
firmware update. This is a known bug in XP.

I think I tried that, too...no dice. Reverting the CD-RW and DVD-ROM drive
firmware to the versions in my previous post is what ended up working.
YMMV...

_/_ Scott Alfter
/ v \
(IIGS( http://alfter.us Top-posting!
\_^_/ pkill -9 /bin/laden What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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I think maybe you are on to something. It's possible the drive began to
produce errors as a result of the firmware upgrade and after 6 of the
errors occurred it triggered XP to turn off DMA.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/...e/IDE-DMA.mspx
When the drive was flashed back it somehow reset the no-DMA setting that
XP assigned. I suppose the upgrade could have been coincidental and
something else like bad cables are causing the errors but if that's the
case XP will reset again after more errors occur. If this happens again
he can manually edit his registry instead of having to reinstall the
driver each time.
http://www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com/cd_writer_udma_mode.htm
If this happens it might be worth for him to try a 80 wire cable if he
is currently using 40.

Dan G wrote:

Your problem would have as easily been solved by uninstalling the IDE
controller and rebooting, which forces XP to re-install - the same as a
firmware update. This is a known bug in XP.


"Scott Alfter" wrote in message
news:KpATa.14697$Bp2.730@fed1read07...

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In article ,
Bob M wrote:

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:09:06 -0400, "Ric" wrote:

I recently got a new Liteon 52x24x52x cd-rw drive and it initially

worked

flawlessly. I'm currently on a spindle of 40x certified media, and the
drive, while refusing to burn at 48x or 52x, always burned at 40x.

However,

suddenly I find that on the same media, it refuses to burn at anything

above

16x. My other liteon burner, a 24x drive, has no problem burning 24x on

this

media.

I'm not sure what's happened here. I did flash from the 6S0D firmware it
came with to the 6S0F. I'm not sure if the change in burn speed occurred
with the flash or not, but it's currently my best guess. However, after
managing to find a copy of the 6S0D firmware, it refuses to flash my

drive

as it claims to be compatible only with liteon drives containing

pre-6S0D

firmware installed.

Is there any way to downgrade my firmware? Is there any other

explanation as

to why it suddenly doesn't like my 40x media?

My Lite-On 52x24x52x cd-rw drive is acting the same way yours is. Mine is
older, bought in January 2003. The Firmware revision is 6S08. Odd that it

is

not in the letter sequence you mentioned. Since I have not made any

changes to

the firmware, I can't attribute the slowness to that. But for now, I am

using

12X (Maybe 16 would work) for my CD-Rs.

In one of my work machines, I have a Pacific Digital (relabeled Liteon
LTR-48125W) 48x12x48 burner. At first, WinXP refused to talk to it in DMA
mode, so burns were slow and hogged the processor. I found a utility to
apply Liteon firmware updates to it...the first one was the latest

available

at the time. I still didn't get DMA from it. After that, I "downgraded"

it

to VS0D and now DMA works.

The same machine also has a (retail-boxed) Liteon LTD163D DVD-ROM drive.
Updating that to the newest firmware killed DMA. "Downgrading" it back to
GHR3 restored DMA.

I suspect that the recent firmware "updates" are breaking more things than
they fix. If you do a little searching of the firmware sites, you should

be

able to find the software that lets you force-apply any Liteon firmware to
any Liteon (retail or rebadged) drive. I'd name names, but I deleted the
software and firmware files after getting my drives working properly.

(If it makes any differece, the machine with these drives is a dual Athlon
MP 1900 on a Tyan S2466N-4M, running WinXP Pro SP1. Running the
Microsoft-supplied IDE driver or the AMD 768 IDE driver made no

difference.)

_/_ Scott Alfter
/ v \
(IIGS( http://alfter.us Top-posting!
\_^_/ pkill -9 /bin/laden What is the most annoying thing on

Usenet?

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On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 12:26:09 -0400, "Ric" wrote:

Have you ever been able to burn faster? Have you changed your media type?
There are clearly media compatibility differences between different firmware
versions, so I suggest you download 6S0D from their website
...

Ric: In my case, I was able to burn 200 meg at 32x (That is what Nero
suggested) back in April. I did a couple of (multi) sessions where I added
typically 20Meg. But the latest session resulted in errors. No changes were
made to the firmware nor software, and it is the same disk as I started with,
a CD-R Maxell, certified at 40x. I tried a TDK disk (unknown rating: It says
Certified on the disk) at 32x, it failed. Then a blank K Hypermedia disk,
rated 48X, but I ran it at 24X it failed. I got a couple of good burns using
12x on cd-r. It worked OK at 24x on a R/W disk.

I am using Windows 95 on this machine. The hard drive is plugged into the 1st
connector (Master) on the 40 pin Primary IDE cable. The cd drive is in the 2nd
connector (slave) of the same cable. DMA is turned off, and has been off since
February, when I was trying to get inCD or packet to work. I gave up on that.

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