Quote:
Originally Posted by Jed57  Can I Cross flash my GSA-H20N to a GSA-H22N, and burn in 18X. | Well, GSA-H20N uses the Panasonic MN103SB4GSA chipset, while the GSA-H22N uses the Panasonic MN103SD2GSA chipset, so it would appear that crossflashing is impossible.
According to ala42 someone tried it and the drive did not burn well ...
That's enough to put you off ... or is it? 
In this thread, pcuckoo says he crossflashed his GSA-H21N to a GSA-H22N and his drive was working OK... but he hasn't posted any scans to indicate a success or a failure...
Looking at the v1.02 H20N and H22N firmwares with MCSE, both fw contain the same bootcode: HL-DT-STDVDRRW GWA-4164BN001JW3012/10/04.
Now, the GSA-H21N is considered to be a OEM version of GSA-H20N made for DELL & HP (uses different firmware than the standard and does not read/write DVD-RAM), which is suspected to use the same Panasonic MN103SB4GSA chip as the GSA-H20N, so it seems that it might be possible after all to crossflash a 'GSA-H20N' drive to a GSA-H22N ... although there are certainly serious arguments against this conclusion ...
Now, it just happen that I've just got one of this GSA-H21N 'DELL' drives, and having opened it I can confirm that it is using the Panasonic MN103SB4GSA chipset. So it is a GSA-H20N drive! Even on the label, besides the GSA-H21N model number, one can find a mention of LGE-DMGSA-H20A(B) ....
My GSA-H21N came from a DELL machine, and was Rev. A00 manufactured June 2007, with fw B109.
Since I hate OEM drives, I thought I should crossflash it. The latest H20N/H22N fw are slightly newer (07/01/31) than the DELL B109 firmware (06/12/21)  and a H20N/H22N drive stands a better chance of a fw update than a H21N drive ...
Normally it should be crossflashed to a GSA-H20N, and this will bring back the 5x DVD-RAM read/write support, disabled in the DELL fw. Although an upgrade already, going from H21N to H20N looked more like a downgrade since 20 < 21 so I thought I should make life more exciting by crossflashing it to a H22 instead
So, I downloaded TDB's LG HL-DT-ST GSA-H22N RPC1 Firmware - v1.01 which contains a crossflash enabled flasher and the latest 1.02 GSA-H22N firmware from LG ...
I've extracted the TDB zip file in a directory, and deleted the W50T71VA.bin file (the v1.01 firmware). Then I've extracted the 1.02 firmware with WinRar from the original LG flasher, and copied the W52T71VA.bin in the same directory containing the WINFLS6X.EXE TDB flasher ... then I double clicked the exe file, selected the appropriate drive from the list and pressed the Flash button and .... the rest is history 
Should you wish so, you can remove the riplock limitation from the 1.02 firmware using ala42's MCSE prior to flashing the unit...
The crossflash was successful, the drive is now recognized as a H22N and so far it seems to burn just fine ...
I burned a DVD+R at 16x and it gave me the best burn I ever had at 16x with this media (by some margin!) out of all my burners so far (LiteOn LH-20A1H, BenQ 1650, Pioneer DVR-212 & Samsung S203B)! I could not believe my eyes, particularly as this is not the greatest quality media, and to burn it well I used to write it at 8x, even that with some fairly poor results on some of my drives (I'm talking about the Maxell branded 16x DVD+R, RICOHJPN R03 004)!
So far so good, but surely if there was to be a problem due to the crossflash, it would be more likely to occur with respect to the new features added by the crossflash, i.e. 18x DVD+R/DVD-R burning rather than 16x with the H20N firmware and 12x DVD-RAM writing rather than 5x with the H20N firmware ...
So, since I don't have a 12x DVD-RAM disc, I thought I should try a Plextor branded 16x DVD+R, YUDEN000 T03, which will burn at 18x. I pressed burn and waited for the disc to shatter, the drive to catch fire and the computer to explode , but instead everything worked fine and got a very nice 18x burn!
What else can I say, other than LG! (Life's Good!) 
To conclude, although I haven't done extensive tests on the crossflashed drive, the two burns I've done so far suggest that crossflashing a H20/H21 drive to a H22 drive is definitely possible and and it was a success (and I'm a happy bunny!  )!
I shall do some more tests in the coming days and I'll post the results here! |
Posted:
31-01-2007
