Posted by GraB on 11/15/82 11:33

>>You say "People who choose to use hacked firmware often have to burn
>>at the lower speeds and even then run into troubles"?? What rubbish!
>>Those who put out hacked firmwares know as much about what they are
>>doing as the original manufacturers.
>
>Tell that to the many that have used non authorized firmware which
>their drives have failed.
>
>I updated my 107 to hacked firmware which went from a good burner to
>many burn failures. Found out why in last months pc user magazine why
>there are problems using hacked firmware.
>
>I had to buy another 107 back then and will NEVER use 3rd party
>firmware again. I leant the hardway. You are still yet to learn.
>
>The article in the magazine states that hacked firmware can be a real
>problem if the hardware has a fault which only authorized firmware
>will correct. The problem with hacked firmware is that it forces the
>media to do something it was never designed to do on that drive and
>the hacked firmware NEVER is made to fix any HARDWARE FAULTS which is
>why thre are burn errors.
>
Before you take the step of flashing the drive you must do extensive
research on the experiences of others who have been successful, WITH
THAT DRIVE. There are many forums where you can find such. EG:
http://forum.rpc1.org/index.php

I did extensive research first. One thing I made sure of was that it
could be reversed if something went wrong. It is also important to
properly identify the drive, exactly. It can be possible to make a
backup of the existing firmware before proceeding. There are DOS
patchers and Windows patchers. If I were using a Windows patcher, as
many are are now, I would do so on a newly booted PC and closing down
as many other processes as possible first, especially anti-virus.

You must get the patched firmware from a reputable source.
Instructions must be followed to the letter. Generally, as they say,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Only flash the firmware if there is
a problem that needs fixing. Avoid firmware that 'turbocharges' the
drive. Too many people have a 'power' fixation - it must be faster!
One reason to use patched firmware is to convert the drive to RPC1.

I have flashed firmwares on different mobos and different drives
multiple times without problem. In my LiteOn 832S I now have CG5J
firmware from CodeGuys. This from the text file that comes with it:

[This firmware has been designed to improve the quality of burns when
using +R, -R, +RW and -RW media. It uses a stepped recalibrate that
stops the burn periodically to recalibrate, which means shorter
periods where the drive has to maintain the correct optical power
control. This same technique can be seen in the NEC 3500AG. Results
now show that this firmware can produce results equal to and sometimes
better than the NEC 3500AG.

This firmware will not be the fastest firmware for your drive. You
have to decide whether you want speed or quality. In saying that this
firmware can burn 8x media almost a minute faster than the NEC 3500AG.

This firmware is not designed to allow you to overclock your media
past the manufactures rating. In fact it requires you to use your
media at the limits imposed by this firmware. Changing the write
speeds of media in this firmware will seriously limit the firmwares
capabilities to improve quality. However should you decide to
overclock media anyway, this firmware will still perform better than
VSxx firmware.]


According to the ECMA standard:

A row of an ECC Block that has at least 1 byte in error
constitutes a PI error. In any 8 consecutive ECC Blocks, the total
number of PI errors before correction shall not exceed 280.

A row is 182 bytes long where the last 10 bytes contain PI (Parity
Inner) information. An ECC block is 208 rows long where the last 16
rows contain the PO (Parity Outer) information. This gives us a
maximum possible PI error amount of 208 errors per block, and for 8
blocks after each other, this sum is of course 8 times higher giving a
maximum possible amount of 1664 PI errors.

If a row of an ECC Block contains more than 5 erroneous bytes, the
row is said to be "PI-uncorrectable" or PIF (Parity Inner Failures).

In any ECC Block, the number of PI-uncorrectable rows should not
exceed 4.

Check out this burn result with OptodiscOR4 DVD+R:
avg PI = 0.92, avg PIF = 0.00. A superb result.

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