Liteon LTR-48246S older firmware source?

I am looking for a source for older versions of the Liteon LTR-48246S firmware.
My problem is I upgraded the firmware on both my Liteon LTR-48246S writers to
the latest "SS0E" and now have less than ideal burning on the fly from one of
the drives to the other. It happens either with audio or data and varies
depending on the disc but is repeatable with each particular disc they have
problems with. In other words the problem appears in reading the drives
handling the source CD. My blanks are the same I have always used and never had
a problem with the same batch I am using prior to the firmware upgrade. It just
appears to now be sensitive in reading the source CDs and/or feeding the info
at 48X.

I am using the bundled Nero I got with the drives and it starts having problems
when the "Used Read Buffer" drops to around 50% (never goes below that) and
then the "Recorder Buffer Level" starts fluctuating all over the place from a
previously stable area of 90%+ causing the recording session to drop to much
slower speeds. Total record speeds varies with different source CDs and like I
said it is repeatable with particular CDs. DMA is enabled.

I would really like to flash back to my previous firmware "SS06", if that is
possible, to see if that takes care of the problem and would appreciate a
source for the firmware as the Liteon site doesn't have older versions
available. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I really doubt this is due to the firmware, you should look for other
causes, like DMA status.
you can find various F/W versions he
http://dhc014.rpc1.org/



"FOR7b" wrote in message
...
I am looking for a source for older versions of the Liteon LTR-48246S
firmware.
My problem is I upgraded the firmware on both my Liteon LTR-48246S writers
to
the latest "SS0E" and now have less than ideal burning on the fly from one
of
the drives to the other. It happens either with audio or data and varies
depending on the disc but is repeatable with each particular disc they
have
problems with. In other words the problem appears in reading the drives
handling the source CD. My blanks are the same I have always used and
never had
a problem with the same batch I am using prior to the firmware upgrade. It
just
appears to now be sensitive in reading the source CDs and/or feeding the
info
at 48X.

I am using the bundled Nero I got with the drives and it starts having
problems
when the "Used Read Buffer" drops to around 50% (never goes below that)
and
then the "Recorder Buffer Level" starts fluctuating all over the place
from a
previously stable area of 90%+ causing the recording session to drop to
much
slower speeds. Total record speeds varies with different source CDs and
like I
said it is repeatable with particular CDs. DMA is enabled.

I would really like to flash back to my previous firmware "SS06", if that
is
possible, to see if that takes care of the problem and would appreciate a
source for the firmware as the Liteon site doesn't have older versions
available. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I really doubt this is due to the firmware, you should look for other
causes, like DMA status.
you can find various F/W versions he
http://dhc014.rpc1.org/


I mentioned that DMA is enabled. I can't think of anything else besides the
firmware upgrade that could be causing it since it started afterwards. With my
older firmware I never had problems. I used to fly through many on the fly
copying sessions with no problems or slowdowns. Who knows maybe the motherboard
is dying on me and it is coincidental. It happens.

Further testing shows that both writers do fine up to about halfway/three
quarters of the way and then all of a sudden quickly lose speed. If the source
CD is not completely full, whether audio or data, then it can usually write
full speed all the way til the end. Again the slowing results vary from CD to
CD and for each CD it is repeatable with no variance of the problem. In other
words some source CDs will be worse than others but are always that way on
subsequent tries. Nero's " CD Speed" utility and Nero Express simulation
recording reproduces the same problem so I don't have to test burn and waste
CDs so I have been testing them that way for now. Again, in that utility the
shorter source CDs past the speed test just fine with no drop off in speed but
if I put in a full source CD then it often drops around the halfway/three
quarter way point and then zig zags up and down in speed until finished. I have
tried:

Swapping IDE cables
Uninstalling and reinstalling the VIA IDE driver (yes DMA is enabled)
Uninstalling and reinstalling Nero to include deleting anything Nero (Ahead)
related on the C drive and in the registry.


I am running both drives on the secondary IDE as both Master and Slave and am
thinking of moving both writers one at a time to the slave position on the
primary and then rerunning the tests to see if maybe the secondary IDE is bad.


I'm getting close to the point of ditching both drives, which are actually less
than year old, because the time it is starting to take to figure this out is
starting not to be worth it. Anyway, any further advice, before I lose my
patience, would be greatly appreciated and thank you for responding.

P.S. I found my older firmware from a site and but will hold off on trying to
reflash it back until I do some more troubleshooting and see if some other
people can help. I also have the firmware to upgrade it to the LTR-52246S that
I may also try.

If you want to verify the read speed of either drive, use CDSpeed's transfer
rate test with whatever disc you need to copy, it will give you an accurate
readout of the drive's read speed on that type of disc. Keep in mind that
read speed is different for different types of discs, recordable vs. RW vs.
pressed, etc.
There is nothing in a firmware that will cause buffers to drop while
recording, so any problem would have to be with the reading (source) drive.
The reason you see buffers drop late on the disc is because that's where the
data transfer rate is highest.
Having both drives on one channel should not cause slow transfers when doing
disc-to-disc copies, but moving one drive to another channel may well cure
it. If the problem occurs when burning to just one drive, as in CDSpeed's
test, then the burners are more or less ruled out as the cause, and the HD
or IDE controller are suspect. I assure you that there is nothing in the
burner than can cause buffer under-run, that must be occurring in the
system.


"FOR7b" wrote in message
...
I really doubt this is due to the firmware, you should look for other
causes, like DMA status.
you can find various F/W versions he
http://dhc014.rpc1.org/


I mentioned that DMA is enabled. I can't think of anything else besides
the
firmware upgrade that could be causing it since it started afterwards.
With my
older firmware I never had problems. I used to fly through many on the fly
copying sessions with no problems or slowdowns. Who knows maybe the
motherboard
is dying on me and it is coincidental. It happens.

Further testing shows that both writers do fine up to about halfway/three
quarters of the way and then all of a sudden quickly lose speed. If the
source
CD is not completely full, whether audio or data, then it can usually
write
full speed all the way til the end. Again the slowing results vary from CD
to
CD and for each CD it is repeatable with no variance of the problem. In
other
words some source CDs will be worse than others but are always that way on
subsequent tries. Nero's " CD Speed" utility and Nero Express simulation
recording reproduces the same problem so I don't have to test burn and
waste
CDs so I have been testing them that way for now. Again, in that utility
the
shorter source CDs past the speed test just fine with no drop off in speed
but
if I put in a full source CD then it often drops around the halfway/three
quarter way point and then zig zags up and down in speed until finished. I
have
tried:

Swapping IDE cables
Uninstalling and reinstalling the VIA IDE driver (yes DMA is enabled)
Uninstalling and reinstalling Nero to include deleting anything Nero
(Ahead)
related on the C drive and in the registry.


I am running both drives on the secondary IDE as both Master and Slave and
am
thinking of moving both writers one at a time to the slave position on the
primary and then rerunning the tests to see if maybe the secondary IDE is
bad.


I'm getting close to the point of ditching both drives, which are actually
less
than year old, because the time it is starting to take to figure this out
is
starting not to be worth it. Anyway, any further advice, before I lose my
patience, would be greatly appreciated and thank you for responding.

P.S. I found my older firmware from a site and but will hold off on trying
to
reflash it back until I do some more troubleshooting and see if some other
people can help. I also have the firmware to upgrade it to the LTR-52246S
that
I may also try.

London Midland & Scotland wrote:

On 17 Oct 2003 09:32:46 GMT, xnxnxnx (FOR7b) wrote:

I am looking for a source for older versions of the Liteon LTR-48246S firmware.
My problem is I upgraded the firmware on both my Liteon LTR-48246S writers to
the latest "SS0E" and now have less than ideal burning on the fly from one of
the drives to the other. It happens either with audio or data and varies
depending on the disc but is repeatable with each particular disc they have
problems with. In other words the problem appears in reading the drives
handling the source CD. My blanks are the same I have always used and never had
a problem with the same batch I am using prior to the firmware upgrade. It just
appears to now be sensitive in reading the source CDs and/or feeding the info
at 48X.

I am using the bundled Nero I got with the drives and it starts having problems
when the "Used Read Buffer" drops to around 50% (never goes below that) and
then the "Recorder Buffer Level" starts fluctuating all over the place from a
previously stable area of 90%+ causing the recording session to drop to much
slower speeds. Total record speeds varies with different source CDs and like I
said it is repeatable with particular CDs. DMA is enabled.

I would really like to flash back to my previous firmware "SS06", if that is
possible, to see if that takes care of the problem and would appreciate a
source for the firmware as the Liteon site doesn't have older versions
available. Any help would be greatly appreciated.






It not normal to copy on the Fly at 48x and the Hard Drive and Both CD Reader
and Writer must be on Separate ports..

Its not the firmware its your system that is at fault..

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.ph...&manufactor=17

It not normal to copy on the Fly at 48x and the Hard Drive and Both CD
Reader
and Writer must be on Separate ports..

Its not the firmware its your system that is at fault..

Hmm, I did have one of the writers as the primary slave and the other as the
master on the secondary. That was *before* I added a DVD drive as the slave on
the primary. I never even thought about that as I hadn't done any major CD
writing since adding the DVD drive a month or so ago. Thanks for pointing that
out as that may likely be the problem. I never had any problems whatsover
copying on the fly at 48X before moving the writer . So that is likely the
cause. I will now move the DVD drive to the slave position on the secondary and
put the writer back into the slave on the primary the way it was leaving the
other writer as the master on the secondary. The same configuration I had
before getting the DVD drive.

Update on changes I also made to my system:

I once again uninstalled Nero, to include left over folders and registry
entries and uninstalled the VIA IDE driver.

I then ran Scan disk and it found errors where in the past it never had. Prior
to that I had run defrag and it would not go too far before saying there were
errors on the disk so that is when I ran Scan Disk to fix that. Anyway I ran
Scan Disk and let it fix errors and then defraged the C:drive as it hadn't been
done in some time. Then after that I reinstalled the VIA IDE driver and
confirmed that DMA for all the drives was enabled after restart, then I decided
to flash the writers to the LTR-52246S which went smoothly and flashed
successfully. I now have 2 52X writers for no extra cost. Then I reinstalled
Nero which of course would now not recognize the writers after the flash since
it was bundled with the drives when they were still LTR-48246S so I went to the
Nero site and downloaded the free update and now Nero recognizes the drives
just fine and works with no problems.

The funny thing is the whole problem is more than likely the moving of the
writer off the primary slave to begin with in harmony with what you are saying.
Oh well, I now have two updaed 52X writers and an updated Nero and a clean hard
drive so not all the time went to nothing. I tested the writers with a
simulation write with a not so full source CD and it did great at 52X. An
almost full one could not handle 52X but did great at 48X all the way through.
This is of course before reading this post of yours. My next tests will be
after I move the writer back to the slave position on the primary and I think
performance, especially for full CDs will be back to the way it was.

Hopefully this experience of mine will help anyone else in a similar situation.
Thank you very much for your help and I will post back here again with my test
results after moving the writer back to the original configuration. Hopefully
the DVD drive will be ok as a slave on the secondary.

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.ph...&manufactor=17

The older links to the Liteon site for the older firmwares are no longer
active. Only the latest firmware is available. Thanks anyway as I didn't need
it afterall since I upgraded the drives to the LTR-52246S.

Having both drives on one channel should not cause slow transfers when doing
disc-to-disc copies, but moving one drive to another channel may well cure
it. If the problem occurs when burning to just one drive, as in CDSpeed's
test, then the burners are more or less ruled out as the cause, and the HD
or IDE controller are suspect. I assure you that there is nothing in the
burner than can cause buffer under-run, that must be occurring in the
system.


Yeah, I just made a long post acknowledging the fact that I did originally have
one of the writers as the slave on the primary before adding a DVD drive to
that spot and moving the other writer to the secondary where the other writer
is as the master. The poster mentioned that and it then it mad sense as I had
recently installed the DVD drive and hadn't done any serious writing until now
so that is probably the cause and I will move the writer back to the primary
slave the way it was originally configured and move the new DVD drie to the
slave secondary.
I'm also keeping an eye on the IDE controller and the hard drive since I
recently lost all my files in the "My Documents folder! I think I remember that
happening once before a long time ago when updating many system files but
haven't been able to find anything in the Knowledge Base on the Microsoft site
or through Google where all your files in the "My Documents" folder suddenly
disappear. I no longer keep files in that folder and like I said am keeping a
close eye on the hard drive as it is 3+ years old and has been heavily used and
the IDE controller.


I also successfully updated the two writers to the LTR-52246S and updated my
Nero so not all the time was lost. I will post back with test results after I
return the drives to their original configuration.

Thanks for the help, greatly appreciated!

I did mean Separate PORTS for the Reader and Writer, not one as Master and
the other as Slave on the Same Port..

So IDE 1 for th Reader & IDE 2 for the Writer..

Yeah, that is what I also said. I said that is originally how they were.
One writer was on the primary (IDE1) and the other on the secondary(IDE2). When
I get the time, may be today, I will be moving it back to the way it was.

Put you Hard Drives on a Promise controller, this is the way I have done it
for years and years, Plus the Image and Buffer File on different Hard
Drives..


IDE does not multitask to well.

Plus Audio CD's don't read to fast at all..



I'll keep that in mind but all should be well when I move the writers back to
their original configuration since they always worked fine that way. I don't
use images for writing which is why I have two writers in the first place so
that isn't a concern. Maybe today I'll move them back but I'm not too excited
about getting inside the computer once again right away.