Dell TSST TS-H653B to Samsung SH-S203B crossflash success

Wanted to share my experience with this:

Have a Dell XPS 420 that came with 16x DVD+-RW Dual Layer. Drive was the TSST TS-H653B with latest DE300 firmware.
Problems:
1. Backing up video DVDs at 16x = horrible quality burns even on my always reliable Verbatim 16x DVD-Rs. The image from the source disk on the HD was perfect, but the burn was awful. Video was choppy and froze. Nero DiscSpeed scores of 84 with tons of PI Fails. 8x seemed to work OK, 92-93 scores but still too many PI Errors/Fails for my liking.
2. All copying software (Nero, IMGBurn, etc) reported it was able to change the book type to DVD-ROM, but all burned +R DL had the disc booktype instead of DVD-ROM after burning.

So I figured, gotta buy a new drive anyway, lets try crossflashing. I saw here and other places that it seemed this drive was in fact either the SH-S183B or SH-S203B. So I flashed it using -NOCHECK with the SH-S203B SB03 off samsung's site. Worked perfect. Then used CodeGuys utility to rebuild SB03 with booktype set permanently to DVD-ROM (didn't try to see if nero was able to change it on its own first, was sick of wasting discs), and to remove riplock. Not even sure if it had riplock, but hey, can't hurt to disable. Haven't tried the other tweaks yet but the booktype was the big one for me.

Burned a +R DL disc and sure enough it came out with DVD-ROM booktype (yay). I burned that one at 8x to be safe but with my 8x Verbatim DLs (that say in the fine print up to 10x compatible) it would let me select up to 12x I think, or maybe it was 10x. I'll have to double check.

Burned a -R disc set to "maximum". 16x verbatim disc and nero burned it at 18x. Scored a *98* in discspeed and video is flawless.

Nero discspeed reports the discs were burned in the SH-S183B even though I have the 203B firmware (possibly a side effect of the codeguys app?). Either that or this really is the 183 and not the 203. However on the "write disc" feature, it reports a speed of 20x, but I don't have media to test that with. With DL media it reports 12x I think, possibly because of my DL media, not sure. But I think the 203 should be 16x.

So it seems like I have a mixture of the 183 and 203 specs. Maybe I'll flash it with 183 firmware and see if that makes things look correct. However with the firmware as is, it is working perfectly.

So basically, the Dell firmware makes this drive a POS. Never understand how they can get away with that.

Hope someone else with this drive finds this useful. This firmware also enables DVD-RAM in this drive which wasn't supported in the Dell firmware.

Any news on how your drive is working since you crossflashed it? Have you tried the latest SH-S203B SB04 firmware yet?

Hi,There is no 183B drive on the market.
This is perfectly normal, even with retail 203B drives (see FAQ, please).
Have a look at the numbering/naming scheme:
OEM P-ATA drives are always TS-H652x, it does not matter if they are derived from SH-S182x or SH-S202x. What matters, that is the last letter, denoted with "x" here. This letter is the only sign to identify the drive correctly.
Same applies to the S-ATA versions. A TS-H653x can be either a SH-S183x or a SH-S203x.
You won't find any 183B firmware at all, since this drive does not exist (it is sold as 203B). Any other SH-S183x firmware will kill your drive.
Have you tried latest D400 firmware published on 05-05-2008? They didn't mention DVD-RAM, but since DVD-RAM was enabled with recent laptop drive firmwares, they might have done this with their HH drives also.

Michael

sweet lord of god

today i randomly decide to go to cdfreaks again and samsung has new firmware for me.

hail samsung

Working great, but haven't burned many more discs beyond the first few I did. Haven't tried that new firmware either, maybe I'll try it when I have some time.

Ah, just saw references to both, guess they're the same.

Good to know

After burning about 10 coasters, 3 of which were Dual Layer, I won't be using Dell firmware anymore. Especially since it appears it does not allow the book type to be set, which is pretty important for stuff I want to play in standalone DVD players.

Ouch! I never thought that OEM firmwares could be messed up in that way

Yeah, Dell does a lousy job with it's firmware updates. I've seen it firsthand.

I have a Dell OEM Philips DVD8801 that I was going to cross-flash into a BenQ DW1650 anyway, so before I did that, I went from the original Philips factory supplied firmware to Dell's updated firmware. Not even close to the same quality burns. Dell seems to get all the crappy updates or something.

If you ever get a Dell OEM burner, do NOT use any of Dell's updates. Either cross-flash it, or leave it alone.

i got the same drive 653B...where do i get the nocheck tool?

nevermind i found it

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Last edited by mciahel; 09-07-2008 at 17:51. Reason: Merged posts

In case anyone else has issue with it...

When you have the firmware downloaded, right click on the all-in-one flasher and choose "Create Shortcut". Now, right-click on the new shortcut, select "Properties", and the properties window should pop up. Click on the "shortcut" tab [if not already selected], and, in the "target" box, add to the end "-nocheck" [without the quotes], and click OK. Now click on the shortcut. It should run the flasher, but somewhere in the flasher window, you should see a mention of "NOCHECK". Then just flash as normal.

Note: you may have to separate the flasher from the firmware [extract from the all-in-one download] for this to work. If that is the case, just right-click on the separate .EXE flasher and create the shortcut from there. After that, follow the rest of the directions.

if you add -nocheck to the target it will say that file/target isnt valid (if done to the all in one flasher)

Applying the -NOCHECK parameter on the all-in-1 file can't work at all, since this is just a selfextracting ZIP archive. So this parameter is ignored at best.

For a successful crossflash, the parameter must be applied on the flasher directly.
After extraction of flasher and firmware file, a shortcut to the flasher including the -NOCHECK parameter can be created.

Michael

Thanks, Michael. I didn't have a flasher at my hands when I typed that; I was just running from memory.

yeah the nocheck command works when doing what mciahel said...thanks to both of you

Hello drinkingbird,
Did you try to upgrade to the new firmware (SH-S203B SB04 firmware). I have the same drive and wanted to check with you before I crossflash this drive.

YAY It worked, sucessfully crossflashed my Dell TSST TS-H653B with the SH-S203B SB04 firmware, and patched it up with Codeking's Utility Patch.
HAIL CDFREAKS!

ha ha thank god for a dell, sorry to hear about their POS firmware, as well as other things...

Hi


Firstly my thanks to drinkingbird who was the first one to crossflash this TS-H653B burner!

I just crossflash my TS-H653B_CM01 driver into SH-S203B_SB04 and everything is fine! In fact I am still a noob trying to crossflash but after realize that Winrar open an .Exe file and shows me inside that file have the flasher and the firmware , everything goes pretty well! In China they sell this driver in retail package.

So far the results using the new firmware is not impressive to me but already improved compared with original firmware, I am using DVD+R 16X Verbatim medias made in Japan MID YUDEN000 T03 and using original firmware I got 84% quality scans, now using SB04 firmware I got 93% quality scans. I burn these discs @ 16X






Any other suggestions to improve my burning?


Thanks

No need to bother with that cross flashing -nocheck flag bs.

Latest Dell firmware for the TSST TS-H653B has the same bin file as in the Samsung version.

Release Date: 9/24/2008
Version: D400, A03

http://support.us.dell.com/support/d...&fileid=253869

No, it is not.

Does this Dell OEM firmware support bitsetting with Nero or Imgburn?
Does this Dell OEM firmware support DVD-RAM operation (here, the media table is not an indication)?

Samsung FW:Dell FW:
Michael

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Last edited by mciahel; 23-12-2008 at 22:21.

Were can I get all of the software to cross flash mine. I have a Dell XPS420 too, but I can't afford a new drive. Any help would save me time and a head ache.

Hi and Welcome!

I bet, your question is answered after you have read the FAQ that is mentioned in my signature

Michael

That only answered part of what I ask. You don't explain how you run the software in no check mode.

Well, the question "How to run a program with parameters in Windows" is beyond the scope of this FAQ

Michael