New Sony writers: Two questions

[Milt]

I have had two Sony writers for about 2-3 weeks-A DRU510a, and a DRX510UL external. The 510a is in an ADS external enclosure. Both
are connected with firewire, and both seem to work great using the Fufilm
+R, and +RW disc I have been experimenting with. No coasters-video works great in my setop box. I have two questions:

1.) Firmware: Of course this has been hammered to death, but I have not followed. They have firmware 1.09b and were built in Oct. 03. If everything is working, is there any reason to upgrade the firmware? Perhaps I will run into issues when I start using other media?

2.) ADS detect: The unit in the ADS enclosure appropriately detects as a 510a in device manager, when connected to a Win98SE machine, but shows up only as an ADS firewire CD device when attached to an XP machine, in its device manager. However, it appropriately shows up as a 510a in burning software. Whats up with the recognition in device manager in XP?

[EricS]

I can't remember what the most crrent firmware is that I laoded, but I have the 510U, and you need to update the firmware so yo can use the DSS program, which allows you to set rip speeds higher than 2X.

[Milt]

Thanks Eric,
I guess that depends then whether I am going to do much ripping or not. I own the drives primarily for video editing and backup, and probably will do little in the way of DVD ripping.

[ebenton]

I believe that what firmware updates do mostly is to make the drive compatible with more different brands of media. If you consistently use the same media and get consistently good results, there is probably no reason to upgrade.
Of course, there is always the chance that the brand of media you are currently buying will change the company with whom they contract to make their disks, and you will start having problems...

[handyguy]

If you update your FW you can't go back to it if you don't have it anymore cause Sony doesn't keep the old ones around for download they said. I changed my FW & my disks went from 2x to 1x So went back to the old one.

[pharlap]

is there something wrong with the firmware number 1.09 isn't this nec and pioneer hacked firmware

[Milt]

Sorry,
That firmware # is actually 1.0b, not 1.09b-mistyped!

[pharlap]

update it to 1.0f
http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/firmware.htm#510