NEC 3450 vs NEC 3500

[marcelr]

My Dell PC came with a NEC 3450 burner. Working great. I was just wondering what the difference is between NEC 3450 and NEC 3500.
Can I use the NEC 3500 firmware to upgrade ? I do not see much firmware upgrades for NEC 3450

Thanks !

[steve2713]

Some info here:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=115074&page=1&pp=25&highlight=3450

Yes, you can flash to 3500 firmware, and then back to 3450 if you want later. BUT, when you flash to 3500 FW you won't be able to burn -R media, only +R. You'll have to flash back to 3450 FW to burn -R media again. So pick your poison: lose the ability to burn -R temporarily but gain all the benefits from all the different modded FWs for the 3500, or stick with the 3450 and its limited FWs. If you've got a couple of spindles of +R media to go through, you could switch to the 3500 for awhile, then switch back if you get -R media, I suppose...

Here's a 3450 FW that removes the Rip speed and DVD Region restrictions:

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_file.php?site=tdb1&file=3450WB12.ZIP