pioneer 110 in a DualG4 with 10.4.+

[rotuts]

Hello

Im getting a pioneer DVD/DL 110 this afternoon. Patches etc have always confused me.

If I put it in a G4dual and run the latest 10.4.+ is there anything else I need to do with if after I install it?

cheers

rotuts

[willrob]

I assume you're gettting the 110D, so you might want to flash it to the 110 firmware which will enable DVD-RAM. Or you may not, but you should at least flash it to the current firmware for the 110D —which is 1.37.

If you upgrade OSX to 10.4.4, IDVD will no longer require the "French" patch to write DL disks.

Depending on how many hard drives you have, you may want to connect the drive to your ATA-66 bus. This will provide you with the transfer spped necessary to achieve 16X writing of DVD-R and 8X writing of +RDL (and now -RDL is also appearing).

[rotuts]

(B)Will

what great tips. I have two now G4duals one was my father's ( now mine) that will take the new 110. one was mine ( and still is) and has the 107 in it.

in the one that will take the 110 I only currently have one HD on the 66 bus. but how do I get the cable over to the CD/DVD bay area? Im not sure the added speed means that much to me, but might.

Ive been told that using the very fast DVD speeds shortens the life of the resulting DVD as slower speeds gets a better 'burn' over time.

Im also thinking of upgradeing the DVD ROM in the top slot, for $40 maybe another 110? the older came-with-the-machine DVD-ROM has trouble with DVD-Rs as they did not exist at the time of the making of the G4dual

what do you suggest I do to semi-optimize this second G4dual.

I was going to get a G5Quad in Jan or feb, as I thought Id avoid MacTell due to the potetial of all that DRM hardware that may be buried in it.

but the new iMac seems zippy so I might wait until the end of the year to see the top of the line MacTell ***G5 on steroids***

your view on this?

cheers

rotus

ps any idea if a HD created on a PCC can be read on the MacTells via firewire drivee?

[rotuts]

Woops Will a few more Q's:

if I have two 110d in the G4dual silvewr door, what would be the tranfer speed from reading in the top drive a DVD and writing to the DVd in the bottom drawer via Toast 7 "copy"?

this is problematic in the current set up with the OEM DVD-ROM tha came with the G4dual

cheers again

rotuts

[willrob]

The cable won't reach to the ATA-66 bus; you'll need a ribbon cable (40 pin-80 wire, the kind that comes with hard drives). But you say you already have a drive plugged into that port. I'm not exactly sure which G4 you have. I have a dual 1Ghz, which has four drive bays, two on an ATA-100 and two on an ATA-66, plus two optical bays, on ATA-3.

If you only have one ATA-66 bus on your motherboard and have a drive already connected to it, then you can't connect the Pioneer to it.

Fast DVD speeds don't shorten the life of the resulting DVD. Not if the media is meant to be written at that speed. Burning 2X media at 6X might cause that, but if you burn 16x media at 16X, or even 12 X it will be fine. Burning at slower speeds keep the drive writing longer, building up heat.

Reading speeds on a 110 (connected to at least an ATA-66 bus wold be 16X; the same as the writing speed. So even if Toast slows down the copying process some, you'd likely get at least 12x speeds in the process. And if you keep the pair of 110s on the normal ATA-3 bus, you'd get around 8X copying. Of course, this only applies to disks of the same size—a 4.7G copied to a disk of the same size. To copy commercial DVDs this way won't work unless you copy to the more expensive dual layer disks (which write at around 4X-8X). In that situation most people rip and compress. I'm not sure how Toast 7 deals with the copy protection schemes on commercial discs. MacTheRipper is the method of choice, with DVD2OneX for the compression.

[rotuts]

thanks Will!
we probably have similar machines? I have the 1.25Ghz G4dual mirror door X2.

the ATA-6 has one HD 300GB

the ATA-3 currently has two CD-R's the one that came with the machine and a samsung for CD -> CD copying

Ill take out the OEM CD and put the 110D there, with the 'newer'Samnsung CD-R but its old.

I was wondering on the ATA-3 bus what the transfer would be DVD ->DVD if I got a second 110D there, as they are only $40 at New Egg.

would I then if I had two 110d just tell toast 7 "best" for copy? I think most of my DVD media is 8 x as thats pretty cheap right now.

thanks for the help

cheers Rotut

[willrob]

Selecting Best in Toasts is usually the safest route, since it seems to know what the media is capabale of.

Is there a reason you didn't put the 300G drive on the ATA-100 bus with your start-up disk? It would get faster read/write times there.

[rotuts]

Will

my computer sys prof says there is an ATA-3 (removable media) and a ATA-6 ( main HD where the shipped drives are placed) and an ATA-4 (the drive bay under the CD-R bay.

I now only have the sigle 300GB drive on this computer. isn't that the fastest bay?

cheers Rotuts[/code]

[willrob]

Yes. I guess my G4 is different. It's a newer model and they started putting an ATA-100 buss (for two drives) while keeping an ATA-66 bus (for two drives).
Of course now the G5's are SATA, so if I ever upgraded I'd have to buy new disk drives, and probably another internal bay to get the same Gbyte for my buck.

[rotuts]

Will

would you point me to the proper flasher for thedd 110D thats now in my G4. it firmware out of the box is 1.17

Im not clear on the DVD-RAM issues

and I may need to find the french flasher as I won't update this drive to 10.4.4 for a while yet.

sorry to be so repetive

thanks rotuts

[willrob]

The applicaation you'll want to use is DVRFlash 2.2 OSX version. Get it at

http://lasvegas.rpc1.org/

Make sure to red the Help file that comes with it.

Then as to firmwares to use.

There is the official Pioneer firmware for the 110D, but also an official 110 firmware you can cross flash to. Cross flashing will turn your 110D into a DVD-Ram capable drive, although it will still be reported by System profiler as a 110D. DVD Ram disks are a unique kind of DVD, and can be written to (once formatted by Apple's Disk Utility) much as you write to a hard drive. Files can be added or removed by dragging on or to the trash. The disk doesn't have to be reformated the way a RW disk does.

The official Pioneer firmware for the 110D can be gotten here:

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/article/0,,2076_4249_277206650,00.html

Since the 110 is not sold in America, one needs to go to a foreign Pioneer site for the DVD-Ram firmware:

http://wwwbsc.pioneer.co.jp/cgi-bin/www1/download/file_get_e2.pl?file=DVR110_FW137EU.EXE

Use UnStuffit to extract the two firmware files from the .EXE versions. Move those two files into the DVRFlash folder, as per instructions.

To add to the confusion, there are RPC1 (or Region Free) versions of these firmwares (in case you want to watch foreign market DVDs on your computer) available at this location:

http://tdb.rpc1.org/#DVR110D

There is also a 110 version there. It's the 1.37 versions you'll want.

[rotuts]

Well Will what a moron Im today.

I did get the two files, and put them in a folder on the desktop as pe inst with Flash2.2 and tried my best and got this:

Last login: Mon Jan 16 16:35:51 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
[DFTs-Computer:~] dft% cd Desktop/DVRFlash
[DFTs-Computer:~/Desktop/DVRFlash] dft% .DVRFlash -vf PIONEER RA100010.137 RA100110.137
tcsh: .DVRFlash: Command not found.
[DFTs-Computer:~/Desktop/DVRFlash] dft%


any further help? there was once a site that had a program that somehow entered the command lines for mne, in the days of the Pioneer 107.

but terminal baffles me.

any more help? sorry for moronic tendencies

rotut

[willrob]

You left out the /

The line should read

./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER RA100010.137 RA100110.137

[Ladd]

FWIW:

I picked up a 15-pack spindle of Memorex+R DL media from Best Buy last week when it was on sale for $20.

Via Toast 7.02 and a Pioneer 110D flashed to firmware 1.3.7, the Media ID code shows it as Ritek D01

Just burned the first disk at max speed (2X) with my 2005 iPhoto Library (7.95 GB) and the burn time as listed by Toast was 41 minutes and that's what it took. Verification time was an additional 20 minutes.

Burner installed internally in a Mac MDD dual 1.25 GHz running 10.3.9. As the drive is on the same ATA bus as that used by the original 4X burner, it is my understanding that faster speeds would be obtained if the drive was connected to a faster bus.

[rotuts]

Will

I added the / and got this:


Last login: Mon Jan 16 16:37:20 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
[DFTs-Computer:~] dft% cd Desktop/DVRFlash
[DFTs-Computer:~/Desktop/DVRFlash] dft% ./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER RA100010.137 RA100110.137

DVRFlash v2.2 : Pioneer DVR firmware flasher
by Agent Smith, et al., November 2005

DISCLAIMER

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE ABILITY OF THIS PROGRAM TO FLASH A
PIONEER OR COMPATIBLE DVR DRIVE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY
SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

THIS PROGRAM IS NOT ENDORSED BY PIONEER CORPORATION OR ANY
COMPANY RESELLING PIONEER EQUIPMENT AS THEIR OWN BRAND

IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PROGRAM AND
DISCHARGE BOTH THE AUTHOR AND PIONEER CORPORATION FROM ANY
DAMAGE OCCURING AS THE RESULT OF ITS USE, PLEASE INDICATE SO
BY ANSWERING THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

Do you understand and agree to the statement above (y/n)?
y

Commandline:
./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER RA100010.137 RA100110.137

Reading firmware 'RA100010.137'...
firmware is of Kernel type (PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110 1.37 )
Reading firmware 'RA100110.137'...
firmware is of Normal type (PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110 1.37 )

Drive Information:
Description : PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110D
Firmware Rev : 1.17
Firmware Date : 05/08/31
Manufacturer : PIONEER
Drive is in normal mode.

Additional Drive Information:
Serial Number : EIDC337633WL
Interface type : ATA
DVR generation : 0011
Kernel type : GENERAL
Normal type : GENERAL
Kernel version : 0002

Status : RPC-2 (region locked)
Region : none
Changes : 5 region changes remaining
4 vendor resets remaining
state is 'Region not set'

Firmwares and Drive type mismatch
Continue because force option was specified
WARNING: Hardware and Firmware really don't match!
[DFTs-Computer:~/Desktop/DVRFlash] dft%


Im terribly sorry to take up so much of your time or of others, but any idea what to do now?

cheers

rotuts

[willrob]

If you're corss flashing, the firmware and drive type shouldn't match. Didn't DVRFlash continue to flash? Or did you stop the process after the last message?

[ZB111]

Could be the wrong firmware for your drive. I got a similar message trying to run the 110D firmware for my 110 burner. Both version 1.37 but drive specific.

[rotuts]

ZB and Will:

if its the wrong frimware, any Idea whta to do or find the right stuff?

cheers

rotuts

[willrob]

All official firmwares are available on the Pioneer website.

Is your drive a 110 or a 110D?
If you have a 110D and are crossflashing to make it a true 110 (with DVD-Ram support) than you would not be using the correct firmware on purpose. This is called force flashing.
If you have a true 110 and are using the 110D firmware it is probably not what you want to be doing.

The 110D firmware is at

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/article/0,,2076_4249_277206650,00.html

The 110 is not sold in America, so you need to get its firmware from Pioneer Europe or Japan.

[TugBoat]

Well,
I'm still trying to wake up... but,
I think I remember reading somewhere that you should set the region on a new drive before you try flashing it. I think...

It appears that you haven't set the region on that drive you're trying to flash. Maybe you should? Just stick a commercial region protected DVD in there and set the region. Then try flashing it again. I don't know, it might help

Oh, remember to remove that DVD before attempting to flash

[ZB111]

http://www.pioneer.com.au/computer/firmware.html
has both firmwares.
Also check this site for great info
http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/search.drivedb.lasso

[mandog]

Ok here is my question for you firmware guys. I'm getting a 110D for my 933 quicksilver to replace the worn out 104. I'm running 10.2.8 I'm pretty sure dual layer is out unless i update to 10.4 that is ok with me. My power book can do all that, on the 933 I want to stay with the old dvdbackup. DVDback up just works, what can i say even on some problematic dvd that the ripper stalls on. What firmware do I need for the 110D?? And where can I get it without loading it into a PC.???

Thanks

[willrob]

Look in this thread to my Jan 16th post. The links to DVDR-flash and the firmware sites are there. Currently there is a newer firmware, 1.39. I don't see any reason why the 110 wouldn't write DL just because you'e on an older operating system. Howevr, you may need to install Patchburn for the drive to be recognized by your iLife apps.

[KeepItSimple]

I also have a Pioneer DVR-110D with 1.17 firmware on a G4 dual 1.25ghz FW800 Mirror doors power mac. This whole process of updating/flashing firmware sounds pretty complicated the way it's explained and remarks like these in the read me file for 'DVRFlash v2.2 Mac OS X' ( http://lasvegas.rpc1.org/ ) don't help and make me nervous about even trying:

"And once and for all, don't play it more stupid than you are!
If you are worried, you probably shouldn't because people who publish the
firmwares do everything they can to provide you with exactly what you need."

"In short, flashing a firmware is not the end of the world, and it is not a
license for bothering busy people with questions on how to use the flashing
tools, the files you need, or how to actually use your Operating System..."

"...3/ If all of the above fails, then, AND ONLY THEN, you can try to post in
the forum with RELEVANT INFORMATION about what you are trying to do and
how you are trying to do it.

But I have to repeat; the information is already out there.
The only difference is that smart people always know how to find it..."

What a snippy read me file! Sounds like he/she is too busy or "smart" (heheheh) to be bothered. Yeah there's irrelevency, repetition etc. etc. but TS we're trying to learn here.

Having said that can someone PLEASE explain these flash instructions differently so a stupid un-smart yutz like me with lots of time to pester smart people can understand? I can open Terminal and set up the folders. I get completely lost after that when it says "Now run a command like:"

[Mac OS X Flashing]

You don't have to install anything special. Just open a Terminal (Located
in your Utilities folder) window and set the directory to your DVRFlash
folder. Be sure that your firmware file(s) are in the same folder. The
simplest way to do this is to place DVRFlash and your firmware file(s) into
a folder called "DVRFlash" on your Desktop. Now enter the following into a
Terminal window:

cd Desktop/DVRFlash

Now run a command like:

./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER R5100004.133 R5100104.133

If you have more than one Pioneer Drive, run DVRFlash without any parameters to discover the driver identifier (Like A:, B:, etc.) and add that just before the word PIONEER (IE: A:PIONEER). Alternatively, if your drives are of different models, you may use the full name if the drive enclosed in quotes. IE (Note the two spaces before the drive model):

./DVRFlash -vf "PIONEER DVD/RW DVR-105" R5100004.133 R5100104.133

The command above will force flash a 105 compatible drive with the Pioneer DVR-105 v1.33 firmware The command above also works with USB and Firewire drives.

Note: The word 'PIONEER' refers to the Vendor Name of the drive. This may appear differently on some OEM drives. Verify the name by entering './DVRFlash' without any parameters.

If flashing a drive to an official update that includes only a single firmware file, the 'f' (force) parameter is not necessary. Neither is the 'v' (verbose) parameter ever necessary. For example:

./DVRFlash PIONEER R5100104.133

It says "run a command like ./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER R5100004.133 R5100104.133"

Do I type that or something else? The read me goes on to talk about parameters and identifiers which I'm clueless on.

Can someone help? I'm sure some others trying to do this have similar questions unless I'm the only yutz out there.
Thanks!

[mandog]

A little update here. I installed the 110D and tried Patchburn. It says it was sucessfull but the profiled says unsupported. Can't get a flasher to wrok on 10.2.8 the revision is 1.17 Toast says it will burn a dvd at 16X so you know what it is all good I don't use iTunes or any iApps anyway. Toast is all I use. Thanks for all the Fish

[willrob]

KeepItSimple:

First download the current firmware you want to install. [1.39 is the most current; see linked sites earlier in this thread]. Typically it will be in an .exe format; use UnStuffit to expand this file. Inside you will find two firmware files with numerical names. These two numbers are to be entered in the Terminal as in the example you quoted.

But before opening Terminal, move these two files into the same folder with DVRFlash, and then move that folder onto your desktop. Launch Terminal and type

cd Desktop/DVRFlash

and hit Return. This command tells the flasher where the firmware files are located. Terminal will respond by presenting you with another prompt. Then type a command like the one you quoted, using the two unique names/numbers of the firmware. Then hit Return and you will be asked if you really want to update the firmware (y/n); type y and hit return. Then sit and watch till completed.

Many people are crossflashing their 110D into a true 110 in order to get DVD-Ram writing ability. If you want to go that route, the firmware for that are not available from the US Pioneer website, since that model is not sold in the states.

>>It says "run a command like ./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER R5100004.133 R5100104.133"

Do I type that or something else? The read me goes on to talk about parameters and identifiers which I'm clueless on. <<

[rotuts]

Will others Im so baffled:!!!

Ive done this before with my 107 but can't do iot with my 110D here is what I got using the lastest firmware. im not really interestedn in DVD-RAM:

Last login: Fri Feb 3 12:04:01 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
[DFTs-Computer:~] dft% cd Desktop/DVRFlash
[DFTs-Computer:~/Desktop/DVRFlash] dft% ./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER RA100011.139 RA100111.139

DVRFlash v2.2 : Pioneer DVR firmware flasher
by Agent Smith, et al., November 2005

DISCLAIMER

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE ABILITY OF THIS PROGRAM TO FLASH A
PIONEER OR COMPATIBLE DVR DRIVE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY
SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

THIS PROGRAM IS NOT ENDORSED BY PIONEER CORPORATION OR ANY
COMPANY RESELLING PIONEER EQUIPMENT AS THEIR OWN BRAND

IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PROGRAM AND
DISCHARGE BOTH THE AUTHOR AND PIONEER CORPORATION FROM ANY
DAMAGE OCCURING AS THE RESULT OF ITS USE, PLEASE INDICATE SO
BY ANSWERING THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

Do you understand and agree to the statement above (y/n)?
y

Commandline:
./DVRFlash -vf PIONEER RA100011.139 RA100111.139

fopen(): No such file or directory
Can't open firmware file 'RA100011.139'
[DFTs-Computer:~/Desktop/DVRFlash] dft%



any further help??

cheers roituts

[KeepItSimple]

A little update here. I installed the 110D and tried Patchburn. It says it was sucessfull but the profiled says unsupported. Can't get a flasher to wrok on 10.2.8 the revision is 1.17 Toast says it will burn a dvd at 16X so you know what it is all good I don't use iTunes or any iApps anyway. Toast is all I use. Thanks for all the Fish

I also installed the 110D (firmware v1.17) and ran Patchburn 3.1.3 for OSX 10.3.9.
It now says "Vendor Supported" under Disc Burning in the System Profile.
The burn time in Toast says under 4 minutes for a single layer disc but it really takes double that or more, maybe burning at 8x instead of 16x??? Actually it takes about 2.5 seconds to count down 1 second so I'm not sure.
Somewhere in this forum was something about hooking up another "unused faster" cable that's inside my G4 dual 1.25 mac to the SuperDrive in order to get the full 16x speed. Does anyone know about that?
Thanks!

[willrob]

Toast doesn't report the correct burning time for 16X, since 16x speed isn't really reached till late in the burn process. If you use a stop watch (or the stopwatch widget) you'll get a better idea.

If your G4 only has the start up drive it shipped with, then you have other drive buses you could connect your 110 to. The optical bus is usually the slowest in the G4 line (ATA-33). If you have a free ATA-66 bus, use a ribbon cable to plug the 110 in there and you get true 16x writing—or at least much faster writing, more like 3-4 minutes per single layer disk.

[mandog]

I have a jag disc 10.3 comming in a couple days. I'll let ya know if there are nay changes uping to jag. Just hope my dvdbackup still works. I know it works fine now at 10.2.8 and does not work with 10.4