A very strange 20A1P reading problem

I just burnt 2 Verbatim MCC004 "Prodisc" with my Pioneer 111L which gives me the best results with this media , for my amazement my LiteOn would recognize the discs as being blank and DVD+RW
I thought that the 2 discs may have a problem but the most strange thing is that some discs of the same media also burnt with Pio 111L that my LiteOn played and scanned fine were also recognized as DVD+RW blanks .

Other discs from the same spindle burnt with any other drive is played and recognized properly as DVD+R
What is going on here ?

Here is what nero cd/dvd speed says now and a scan done previosly when the disc played :

Scan

Recently installed Alcohol perhaps.

Well , I think that the drive is dead as the first one here :

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=219045

This drive is a replacement of the older one in the above thread , the older one was manufactured December 2006 and this one January 2007

Could this be due to ltnrpc utility that I used to set the drive to RPC1 before the drive is screwed ?

I also cleared Learnt Media in safe mode , restarted , cleared Hyper Tuning , restarted , restored original EEPROM and restarted and the problem is still there

Maybe C0deKing could help

Oddly enough, I saw something similar recently (MCC 004 recognized as DVD+RW in CDSpeed), but I didn't take too much notice and don't remember the exact circumstances. It didn't involve a Pioneer burn, may even have been a blank disc. It seems to have gone away by itself. Have you tried with an older version of CDSpeed yet, minaelromany?

Even without CD/DVD Speed , when I insert "certain" discs it shows as cd with DVD-ROM logo , and it is recognized as DVD+RW with all other programs (DVDInfo , Booktype Utility and SmartBurn Utility) .
The problem is with certain discs of MCC004 AND OPTODISC R16 both 16X DVD+R andboth were recognized perfectly before I set the drive to RPC1 with ltnrpc utility

Another disc also (MCC004) that even read fine when the problem started was recognized as DVD+RW but after playing with Booktype Utility and/or Ltnrpc it was recognized properly again !!!

Here is what DVDInfo says about the same disc in the 20A1P and Pioneer 111:

I am sure now that LtnRPC and/or Booktype Utility screwed the drive , is there any way that cn restore the factory defaults of the drive ? other than restoring EEPROM / Resetting Learnt Media ad Hyper Tuning ?

Hi,

have you tried to set the drive back to RPC2 using either Ltnrpc or Kprobe (I prefer the latter)?

Michael

I did and the problem remains

Kprobe can scan the unrecognized discs with good results , but it also shows them as DVD+RW , when I click on the drive's icon it gives me an error message with the DVD-ROM logo and CD Drive label ! :

Now I know the problem but have no idea about how to solve it

It seems that LtnRPC utility does something to CDB (Which I have no idea what it may be !) just because Nero cd/dvd speed reports the same problem that LtnRPC reports when it disables RPC1 (INVALID FIELD IN CDB(052400))

The LtnRPC utility must have done something with the CDB in the drive in order to make it RPC1 and that particular "something" has screwd the drive's reading ability , it also seems the drive is deteriorating with every "play" I do with LtnRPC utility .

I can RMA the drive again for replacement but I WILL NOT , just because I need to fix it myself (with your help of course )

Can I clear the drive's EEPROM totally first and then restore the original backup I made ? would that help in my case ?

Here is the pic for the error :

That's really strange. I never used LtnRPC, but I do wonder sometimes what the real effect of these older tools with OPC clearing and resetting is on the newer drive's EEPROMs. It all seems very unpredictable.

So , is there any way to totally clear the drive's EEPROM and restore it from the backup file ?

Restoring the EEPROM file over the existing one can not help

Why not?
If you have a virgin eeprom backup in 8kB size, everything useful will be restored.
But maybe the problem is somewhere else. Have you checked your subsystem like chipset drivers, cableconnections, power-&-IDE-cable, aso.

That LtnRPC is outdated. I would recommend LtnFlash v.2 if you like to play around, and then if you like to see all actions in details run TraceSPTI (guide in my sig.) in backgrund while changing rpc and other values within eeprom.

BTW, test that drive in another system first before start learning bits, bytes, binaries...

I don't know, minaelromany. Maybe Lite-On does . I also wanted to ask if you'd tried the drive in another PC, like pinto2 suggested? All I know is that I don't get a good feel for what these drives are doing. Off-topic but just as an illustration, I was copying some unimportant data on a Memorex CMC MAG E01 @4X with my SH-16A7S@LH-16A1S this evening. OPC Cleared, Learnt Media and HyperTuning reset and pertinently knowing All is OFF in SmartBurn, this drive does an OHT double-blink when burning... I'm definitely not smart enough to operate a Lite-On . This should explain it: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.ph...2&postcount=35 . Still hope your drive's okay .

Even more off-topic: burning at lower speeds [such as 4x] with any media [even 4x media] calls for HT [the drive doesn't have many 4x strategies in its firmware, although it allows for 4x for most discs; thus, it uses HT to make a strategy].

These drives really are tricky.

@wallace0134 - yeah, when I saw Wind was back , I thought about we should ask for a list of MID's/speeds with strategies .

Off topic.

Well , I tried the drive in another PC and the problem is still there
I am absolutely positive that LtnRPC caused the problem to the drive as it did with the first one I RMAd .
I am trying to figure out TraceSPTI now but I don't think that I can handle all this technical stuff

The drive was performing great for me specially when writing TYG03 (Panasonic) @20X , and the problem seems to affect "only" DVD+R discs with DVD-ROM booktype (but not all of them)

I am sure that a complete EEPROM and Firmware erase/restore procedure would revive the drive but I don't know how to do it

Flashing the drive and writing an 8KB EEPROM is about as close to a complete restore as you can get. The only one better is XSF with the -full option but you must be restoring a backup made with the -full option or it will kill the drive.

If it was a problem with LtnRPC then I think we would have heard from a lot more people having the same problem by now. And anything LtnRPC changes, should be restored by restoring the backup EEPROM.

I'm sorry but I don't know what to suggest that hasn't already been suggested.

BTW, 052400 is the normal CDB error report, if RPC has been disabled.

Maybe it is not in EEPROM or in a part of it that doesn't get restored fully

I am sure that it was LtnRPC just because it was the only piece of software that I used immediately before "both" 20A1P had the "same" problem , maybe it was something I did wrong like disabling RPC2 when a disc was in drive
I've tried disabling RPC2 and then restored the EEPROM and you are right it was restored to RPC2 but as I said maybe the change was in another "unrestorable" part of EEPROM .

The problem affects only "some" of the DVD-ROM Booktyped DVD+R of MCC004 and OPTODISC R16 .
I burnt a disc with Pioneer 111 1.29 (Non auto-bitsetting f/w) and the LitOn drive recognized it fine then I changed the Pioneer to 111L 8.29 (Buffalo auto-bitsetting f/w) and the lity couldn't recognize the disc but after some ejects and loads it recognized the disc and I made a scan but after ejecting and loading again it didn't recognize the disc

I also burnt a Verbatim disc (Prodisc made) with the Lity and it was great and the disc reads very well with no problems whatsoever

I also know that error 052400 in CDB is normal when disabling RPC2 but I was confused when cd/dvd speed reported the same problem code when initializing TRT

Here are two scans with Lity for the problematic disc burnt with Pio 111L(only in 20A1P) and the good disc burnt with the Lity :

Now it seems that even my TYG03 DVD-R media is also screwed with this drive , it used to burn them beautifully and now it can't even read the burnt discs .
It still can burn TYG03 but results are horrible compared to what it used to produce and it can't even read its own TYG03 burns

Here are some scans :

Previous excellent quality of the drive


The horrible quality of a disc burnt with the drive which it couldn't read back


Another disc burnt with Benq 1640 for comparison


Smart Burn utility reporting the disc


Another info for another disc


Here is what Kprobe reports about the media :

Disc Type DVD-R
Book Type Unknown
Manufacturer
Media ID
Capacity 8192.00 GB
Free Size 0.00 GB
Free Blocks 0
Number of Layers 0
Maximum Read Speed 5.2x
Maximum Write Speed 5.2x
Current Write Speed 6.1x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 1 6.1x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 2 5.1x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 3 4.1x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 4 3.1x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 5 2.0x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 6 1.5x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 7 1.3x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 8 1.0x CLV
Write Speed Performance Descriptor 9 0.5x CLV

This problem is a new one , not the previous problem with it not reading DVD+R media booktyped to DVD-ROM

The drive makes some klicking when trying to read these TYG03 discs and fails ultimately to read them

What did I do wrong ?

Does all this happen just because I changed some SB settings while a disc was in drive ?

It was working fine with TYG03 media untill two days ago when I tried to burn an ISO with cd/dvd speed @16X and it reverted back to 6X after hitting ~10X speed and then it couldn't read its own burn which reads fine with all my other burners ?

While scouting around the web for info on the current Liteons as an alternative to burning TYG03s my DW1650 I did read that they can go wrong all of sudden. Is this an example of poor reliability?

In one word : NO

The drive worked great with TYG03 media , it is when I used the "tools" to configure the drive that every thing went down hell !!!!!

Back to original topic :

I cleared OPC again and downgraded and upgraded the drive again with no use , TYG03 media burn just fine with it but can't be read back

Here are two scans of TYG03 media burnt with Beq 1640 and LiteOn 20A1P :

so there are no solution for this problem until now?

I'm having a similar problem - glad someone else has seen this ... burned hundreds of Verbatim +R 16x non-printables in the 20A1P no problem. Switched to Verbatim +R 16x Printables and IMGBURN fails verfication at Sector 0 on every one of them. Some will work in the DVD player, some won't.

Only difference I can see is that on the initial burn IMGBURN reports the disc as +R, but on verification (after cycling the tray) it reports the disc as +RW and fails with L-EC errors. The non-printables report +R on burn and verification and run fine.

My drive was a Lite-On OEM that I flashed to a full 20A1P so I guess that's where the problem might be ...

Cheaper to upgrade to a Pioneer 215D than throw the discs away I guess ...