NEC 3520 riplocked or not?

[Poppa_Meth]

I've got a Pioneer 109 and it work fine for me since reverting to 1.40 firmware. 1.50 results in consistantly bad burns on my TYG03 media. I also have a Samsung 616T DVD-ROM that's giving me hell. I'm thinking of just putting another burner in along with the Pioneer since they are relatively cheap now. I'm considering the NEC 3520 since it's also a highly rated drive. I'm just wondering if it is rip locked though. the Pioneer is not as I discovered this morning. I got about 10x on a dual layer disc. I shouldn't have any issues running two burners together should I?

[lenti_75]

it is, but you flash it with a hacked firmware and you're done.
find it @ cdfreaks.com

[erdons]

It is rip locked when you buy it, but flashing it with liggy and dee's firmware will fix that. I find the NEC3250 to be a bit slower than the pioneer, it takes the NEC 10 minutes to burn a full single layerd tyg02. It will rip single layer media very fast, maybe up to 13x, but its kind of slow ripping dual layered discs. Just my 2 cents.

[Poppa_Meth]

Well I'll use them back and forth anyway. Whichever works best for certain tasks is what I'll use. I'm just tired of this DVD-ROM buzzing like a swarm of bees. And my Pioneer works fairly well but has some issues with my TYG03 media so I wouldn't mind an alternate burner as well.

[INFRATOM]

The NEC 3520 is as explained above, with my experience if you buy NEC you must use hacked firmware and it works ok but with some it rips too fast and may throw errors also when you want to burn it wants to burn eg 16x, which defenitely going to throw errors and every time one has to set max burn, I use Maxell and it goes to 16x. I would say first buy an external because if you put 2 in your computer one has to be slave and with the amount of data going it would slow down and you beat the purpose. DVD burners are best if you put it on primary channel and don't use what ever is on secondary when you are burning. If you have many hard drives better buy a ide card if you don't want to buy external

[Poppa_Meth]

I've always run my DVD Burners on secondary slave and never had problems with them at all. I'm not too concerned on that. I don't use the DVD-ROM, which is master at the same time as the burner though.

[sssax2003]

I've got a Pioneer 109 and it work fine for me since reverting to 1.40 firmware. 1.50 results in consistantly bad burns on my TYG03 media. I also have a Samsung 616T DVD-ROM that's giving me hell. I'm thinking of just putting another burner in along with the Pioneer since they are relatively cheap now. I'm considering the NEC 3520 since it's also a highly rated drive. I'm just wondering if it is rip locked though. the Pioneer is not as I discovered this morning. I got about 10x on a dual layer disc. I shouldn't have any issues running two burners together should I?

How did you change back to 1.40? I just upgraded mines to 1.50 and don't really like it. By the way where are the links to the 3rd party flasher and 1.40?

[Poppa_Meth]

Got mine here

http://www.dvd-recordable.org/wwwimgs/media/flash/html/Firmware/

[Poppa_Meth]

anyone know if the Pioneer 109 is riplocked? I found that mine is not but I'm thinking I may have acidentally flashed hacked firmware instead of the standard when I flashed back to 1.40

[sssax2003]

Which ones did you use? I see about 3 EU's?

anyone know if the Pioneer 109 is riplocked? I found that mine is not but I'm thinking I may have acidentally flashed hacked firmware instead of the standard when I flashed back to 1.40

[Poppa_Meth]

the standard 140eu zipped version.

[chas0039]

anyone know if the Pioneer 109 is riplocked? I found that mine is not but I'm thinking I may have acidentally flashed hacked firmware instead of the standard when I flashed back to 1.40

The Pioneer is riplocked if you get the 109, but not if you have the A09XL. It is possible to crossflash the 109 to the A09 firmware (void warranty and standard caveats) and they you get a much faster rip.

The NEC 35XX drive is one of the fastest SL rippers without any hacks to the firmware. The primary reason for hacked firmware is to implement bitsetting. With quality media it need very little tweaking. Even with riplocked firmware, it is much slower than the Pioneer, the BenQ 1620, or the Liteon 1693S. The BenQ and Liteon will get near 14.5X at the max as will the AOpen 1648 AAP.

Get info on NEC firmware here:

http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/

Get info on Pioneer firmware here:

http://www.speedlabs.org/index.php/topic,83.0/all.html

http://www.dvd-recordable.org/wwwimgs/media/flash/html/Firmware/index.php?path=PIONEER%2FDVR-109/

For the Pioneer flash you need to use DVRupdate v0.9.zip instead of the exe file that comes from Pioneer.

BTW, I agree with your plan to add an NEC 3520. When I scan burns, the NEC has significantly fewer errors than the Pioneer.

[Poppa_Meth]

Yeah I've already flashed A09 firmware to the Pioneer. And I'm using Liggy and Dee's newest Firmware for the NEC. The 109 is must faster on dual layer than the NEC is. (I'm using the riplock removed firmware on the NEC). You've probably seen my posts on the CDFreaks boards too about the problems I'm having with them. The Pioneer locks up at the end of a burn on 16x CAV -R media quite often. Not too sure what I think of the 3520 yet. When the 109 works correctly the burns on -R are superior for me. I'll try some of my 4x +R media in a bit on the NEC. I'm hoping it will give very good results with the booktype set to DVD-ROM. I use to have an 1100A which never let me down. I'm kind of sorry I upgraded. It burned DVD-ROM Booktype on stock firmware and gave me perfect burns everytime. At least for every set-top I played them on. Scanning tells a different story but I've gotten to the point where I don't pay much attention to scans anymore. I've gotten absolutely horrible scans and never had any playback issues with the discs.

[chas0039]

I've gotten absolutely horrible scans and never had any playback issues with the discs.

So have I, but lately I have been very critical of the total number of errors. All my burns have such low error max rates it is the logical next frontier. Besides, where is the fun if all we do is watch the DVD.

Good luck with your freeze problem.