Is your Pioneer A04/104 still burning 4x discs at 1x?

[schmeg]

Here's a public service announcement for anyone with a Pioneer A04/104 that isn't taking advantage of the faster speed discs.

I always thought I was pretty savvy about DVD burning, but for the life of me I was puzzled about why my drive was still only burning at 1x with the new faster 4x discs.

System Profiler told me I had revision A227, but didn't display a firmware version that looked numerically anything like 1.33, 1.40, etc. I ran Apple's utility to confirm that my drive was capable of burning on 4x discs without killing itself, and that passed okay.

So I was under the false impression that my drive had the latest firmware.

Yet all those discs I bought which claimed they would burn at 2x still only puttered along at 1x. I even called one online company that I ordered blank media from to yell at them for making false claims about their discs. Oops.

Then one day I came across a message on the DVD2OneX forum where it became clear to me that I didn't have the right firmware, and that it was indeed possible to upgrade. I must've read similar information dozens of times without ever cluing in that the Apple compatibility test merely confirmed that I had =at least= a high enough version to handle high-speed media, not necessary the NEWEST/BEST version.

I felt like such a bozo.

So, if there's even one other Pioneer 104 user out there who is as much a clown as I am and is still burning at 1x...follow the link below (there are probably others) for a nifty self-contained program that will flash your firmware to the newest 1.40 version.

Since then I have successfully burned at 2x on a handful of different el-cheapo 4x media, with the exception of a whole stack of Sonics from Shop4Tech that threw medium errors and hardware errors at me. Grr.

Try this:
http://www.macbidouille.com/downloads/PIONEER_DVR-104.sit

(yes, I know that getting a Pioneer 107 would be an even better way of resolving this, but this Mac is company machine that I have at home, and I don't want to mess around with switching out the hardware on this "official" box.)

[MerlinMacuser]

Are there any firmware upgrades for the Sony U10A that came in my G5?

[FCPguy]

Ok,
I've had this exact fix on my A04... but what's the deal? I usually go the way of MTR, if needed DVDtooneX, then Toast... but in toast what do you choose as speed?
The best selection is still giving me 1X results. Do I need to manually tell it to go 2X? I wasn't sure about that, cause the fix hasn't sped my time up yet Thanks in advance for any help-

[thoughton]

Have you tried a variety of media? My drive is rated 2x, but I had burnt over 100 discs before I found a brand that would actually burn at 2x (datasafe ritek-g04 4x in case you were wondering ). With most other 2x discs I'd get the 27:00 countdown, but each second counted would take 2 seconds Supposedly that is a sign that Toast thinks your media is not 'good enough'. I've never had any problems with the slow-burn discs.

What's even weirder is that my first 25pack of datasafe all burnt at 1x. My next pack all burnt at 2x. I guess they changed the type of disc, although the printed top looks almost identical.

[FCPguy]

I'm burning on Prodisc 4X (the white ones you can print on) I was told this was a good media and capable of at least 2X burns, so I'm hoping I can get it to do that. (burning at 1X is really tying my machine up

Anyone out there with advice? and thanks again-

[schmeg]

Ok,
I've had this exact fix on my A04... but what's the deal? I usually go the way of MTR, if needed DVDtooneX, then Toast... but in toast what do you choose as speed?
The best selection is still giving me 1X results. Do I need to manually tell it to go 2X? I wasn't sure about that, cause the fix hasn't sped my time up yet :( Thanks in advance for any help-

When you burn a disc in Toast, the recording speed drop-down list only gives you the option of 1X?

Then perhaps there is a problem with your current selection of blank discs. Some online companies (Meritline, etc.) have sampler packs of 4X discs that would be good to try with Toast, now that you have the 1.40 firmware installed.

I use mostly super-cheap discs from a variety of companies -- currently Digital HQ from Shop4Tech is burning at 2X on my 104/A04. I had some leftover from another no-name batch that worked fine, too.

I've never had the situation where Toast counts down 27:00 over 54 minutes! That's kind of funny, actually. I still use Toast 5.2.3.

[decay]

isn't some media rated for 1x and 4x, but not 2x?
is that possible?

dk

[FCPguy]

The option is there for faster speeds, but no matter what I pick (Speed better, 1X, or 2X, it still gives me 1X speeds).

[Metallirat]

My problem is that I have a A04 and I ran the firmware upgrade thinggy and restarted and it still says I have verrsion A227. Not 1.40 Like i told it to upgrade to. I dont know what im doing wrong

[geezerbuttz]

From what i have seen in the past , the Axxx in a firmware revision indicates it APPLES firmware...... if you want to upgrade to a PIONEER firmware , you will also have to flash the KERNEL as well.

Only way to make it 100% Pioneer.

[sknox]

moved to new topic

[thoughton]

moved to new topic

Why?

[FCPguy]

before we move to new topic-
I downloaded the link on this page- i re-installed this firmware so I could burn faster. Do I need to set toast to 2X to get the improved performance? or just choose Best? I just can't figure out why I can't burn at faster than 1X even with good media and the downloaded fix.