Possible to flash Optorite DD0203 fw 2.30 back to fw 2.16??

[HobbieMan]

Hi,

I flashed my optorite to fw 2.30 yesterday. I used the windows DV2Flash program to flash it. The program crashed at the very end and left the drive door opened. After a hard reset of the PC, the drive door closed and everything *seemed* fine. But ever since, I am experiencing lockups, and I know these are caused by the drive (the drive will not eject, but the other dvd rom drive in same IDE controller does).

Anyhow, I have power cycled the machine many times since, and have also booted with the drive disconnected. When the drive is disconnected, I experience no problems... When the drive is connected I experience random lockups. Oh yeah, and windows reports the drive as having fw 2.30.

For the record, this machine was incredible stable up until I screwed around with the optorite's fw! I regret having done this. I was trying to flash it to v2.30 to gain 4x write speed on my PRINCO DVDs! Now I would be happy with 2x and my previous stable system! To top it all off, the fw upgrade did not give me 4x!

So, I was thinking that fw 2.30 may have been only partially loaded to the drive, so I have tried flashing fw 2.30 again, but this time from a dos bootdisk. The flash program seems to work, but then, in the last stage, it just keeps increasing the count until reaches about 178 and then it just freezes.

My question is: has anyone flashed the drive back to fw 2.16 from 2.30? or to any other earlier fw version (ie. fw 2.25 or 2.23)? And if so, is the drive still working? I don't want to try and flash it back yet, since the drive still works 50% of the time, and I am afraid this could render it useless... but I guess if no one has tried it, I might as well give it a shot and if it does not work, I can just call optorite...

Thanks.

[Coopervid]

Try the fw from TDB

http://tdb.rpc1.org/

If you still have trouble you can contact them (bottom of page) but try first!

[shayniferd]

I had an optorite and was able to flash back to a previous version when they posted firmware for another burner as an update for the 203 with no problems. I had to create a startup disc and boot from dos but it was a minor inconvenience.

[SirCentz]

I had a similar problem flashing.

When I flashed the 2.30 bios, the percentage bar went past 100%, back to 0% and continued to somewhere around 85%. At that point the app crashed and suggested sending diag info to Microsoft (Windows XP standard error box).

The problem seems to be with the 1.1 flash program. Use the 1.0 flash program and it should flash fine. I've contacted Optorite about the issue and they're testing a newer version.

-SC

[reggaematic]

I had the same problem as far as the 100% things goes. It just crashed at the very end. Instead of rebooting, I immediately flashed back to version 2.11 and my drive is fine. Do not go to 2.30. I'm happy at 2.11 and I plan to stay there.

I did contact Optorite and they cofirmed that you CAN flash back to older Firmwares just fine.