Sony DW-U18A help.

[DLogic]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was the OEM version of the DRU 530A. Anyways, 1st off, I have NOT encountered anything that most people have with the retail version of this drive. What I'm curious about is the firmware upgrades. I've tried a google search on firmware upgrades but get nothing but hacks.

Does anyone one know:
a) what the original model is (i.e. Liteon, etc.)?
b) and if there is a somewhat safe way to upgrade this drive w/o using a hack?

The main problem I am having is using CD-R's created with the Sony Mavica camera. I cannot get this drive to recognize these discs. The CD's are closed and they do read in other drives. I just don't want to have to reconnect another CD/DVD drive to read these CD's seeing as how I've got 3 hard drives and the burner.

Thanks for any help and advice.

[code65536]

This drive is NOT related in any way, shape, or form with the 530.

The 530 uses the Sanyo chipset and was manufactured for Sony by Optorite.

The U18A uses the MediaTek chipset and was manufactured for Sony by LiteOn.

The chipsets, hardware, firmware, etc., are all completely different in every way, shape, and form.

The U18A is a rebadged LiteOn 812S drive. The only known firmware for the U18A is UYS1. No newer firmware is known to exist.

If you want a newer firmware, you should try the new US0N firmware for the 812S drives just released today. Preliminary tests show that the US0N firmware is a much better firmware than any previous firmware for the 812S family of drives, so I would highly recommend that you try US0N if you want to use a newer firmware. Be warned, however, that you void your warranty by doing this unsupported flash to the US0N firmware.

Unfortunately, because of recent protection schemes that have been put in, you cannot directly use the US0N firmware found on the LiteOn website... so...

1/ Download FlashFix from Digi's website ( http://digi.rpc1.org/ )
2/ Download any one of the US0N firmwares found on my website ( http://codeguys.rpc1.org/firmwares.html ) (the stock version is the official version and the burn-adjusted version is a specially patched version that produces smoother and faster burns).
3/ Use FlashFix to patch the .EXE file found in the package downloaded from my website.
4/ After FlashFixing the .EXE, run it.

[DLogic]

thanks for the advice code. Is there detailed info on exactly what is changed on your patched firmwares? I just don't want to dive in only to find out something critical has been changed. I didn't see any more info on those pages.

EDIT: Okay... LOL... i've spent the last two hours reading on how you can do DW-U18A -> SOHW-812S -> SOHW-832S -> DRU-700A and I now have a huge headache. Am I correct in concluding that I can hack the DW-U18A to a drive that can burn dual layer media?

[code65536]

That's what the enclosed documentation is for...

[brtecson]

i went ahead and flashed my dwu18a with your firmware. i'll try it out when i get some media.

thanks for the help/advice, and thanks for keeping these firmwares available on your site for everybody to use

[brtecson]

yikes, i burned a 4x memorex(mfg by ricoh) @ 8x in well under 10 mins. 8)

[DLogic]

Thanks code65536... I finally had the time to try this out and just flashed my drive with the stock US0N. Gonna try it out in a short time here. I can see you've been working pretty hard elsewhere and I appreciate your help here. Can you send me a link to the forum that you seem to be working a little more with? I see your posts everywhere!

[code65536]

Thanks code65536... I finally had the time to try this out and just flashed my drive with the stock US0N. Gonna try it out in a short time here. I can see you've been working pretty hard elsewhere and I appreciate your help here. Can you send me a link to the forum that you seem to be working a little more with? I see your posts everywhere!

My primary "home" is the CD Freaks LiteOn forum, of which I'm a moderator.

The LiteOn forum is where I generally hang out mostly because it's the only LiteOn-specific forum out there, and as a result, the vast majority of the LiteOn discussion takes place there. My other home is rpc1.org (as you may guess from my www address), but I don't do much there because there isn't much LiteOn-related discussion there.