LG GSA 4166 and Panasonic / Matsushita DVD RAM driver

Hi all

The GSA 4166 is a very new DVD burner. It provides the same features like the 4167 plus Lightscribe.

My question is if this burner would work with the Panasonic / Matsushita DVD RAM Driver. This driver is pretty small and I do not have any problems with it on my notebook?

Any experiences?

Thanks

th_mi

I think it will depend on the driver's version, as you get a table of all the supported drives plus a generic one.
maybe the generic one can do the job for most ( or at least part on the unlisted drives), but in the case of LG the last versions have at least the 4165 and the 4167 in the lists.
The 4166 must be the same as one of these drives (maybe the LightScribe version of the 4165) and what concerns DVD-RAM it's possible that you don't need your model specifically listed for it to work.
I'm curious about it too, besides I miised the chance to buy one last week in Frankfurt and it didn't show up here yet as I thought.

The latest DVD RAM driver at the Panasonic site contains support in the INf for

GSA4160B
GSA4163B
GSA4165B
GSA4167B
GSA4168B

I don't know if Lightscribe affects the DVD RAM functionality.

By the way this driver should support the NEC (it is in the INF file)

ND-4550A
ND-4551A
ND-7550A
ND-7551A

The versions of the driver files are newer than the DVD RAM driver updater @ BHACorp

***************************************************************
Software Version

August 5, 2005
***************************************************************

Driver Software
meiudf.sys - Ver 4.0.7.0
dvdram.sys - Ver 4.0.1.0
Format Software(DVDForm) - Ver 4.2.2.0
Write Protect Tool(WPTool) - Ver 1.1.6.0
DVD-RAM Utility(DVDTool) - Ver 1.1.3.0



So hopefully the GSA 4166 will work with this DVD RAM driver!?

Your drivers are newer than the ones I've got (changed dvd-ram.sys and WPtool).
I'd a look at pana site and the date there seems to be Sept 9, 2005 for the package.
it will probably identify your drive as 4165b, but I'm surprised they list the 4168b, that should be the same as yours but referred to the 4167b (plus lightScribe).
And for the Necs they also list the 4550 and the 4551 (same dif. ref. Labelxxx similar to LightScribe in the LG).
Did you manged to install the driver downloaded from pana site? Or do you have a Panasonic drive also, pls?

I also have a panasonic drive. Sice I discovered that DVD RAM is the coolest thing, I bought a Panasonic UJ-845 and put it in a slimline housing with USB2 and Firewire. It is a very small DVD RAM drive and it works really great. I do not really use the other DVD formats with this drive. On firewire it works buspowered...

I ordered my GSA 4166 and I will hopefully get my external USB/FW 5.25" housing. When I have it I'll try it on one of my test PCs if the DVD RAM driver will work with the LG burner.

I'll update this posting if I know more...

Today I got my GSA 4166 and my USB / FW external case. I tested the drive in the case. Windows XP displayed the GSA 4166 as DVD RAM drive. I was able to read from the drive, but I could not write anything on a DVD RAM. So it seems that the current Panasonic dirver does not work correctly.
I did not make a large test, i came home very late so I'll put the drive directly in one of my test PCs and I'll test it again.

At the moment I do not think the GSA 4166 will work with the Panasonic DVD RAM driver. It seems I need Aheads InCD...

More at the end of the weekend.... hopefully!?

Are you sure it's using the Panasonic drivers and not the XP native driver? As I understand it, the XP driver can't cope with UDF formatted DVD-RAM.

Yes I'm pretty sure that there is a problem with the Panasonic Win XP driver.

My target PC is a Samsung P35 notebook (by the way samsung makes great notebooks ). This notebook kontains a TEAC DV-W24E DVD supermulti burner with DVD RAM Support. This drive works perfect with UDF formatted DVD-RAMs. When I connect the GSA 4166 I have basically read access, but when I try to copy a file to the DVD RAM it will takes a loooooooooong time and then I get an error "cant write ...blablabla". The same DVD RAM works with the notebook drive with no problems.

I pluged the drive to my Win2K system. This has Roxio Direct CD installed. I tried to write to the DVD RAM and I could not do it. When I use my small external DVD RAM drive (a Panasonic UJ 845) it makes no problems.

So it seems that there is a DVD RAM compatibiliy problem. Something must be different to my notebook drive and the UJ 845. Maybe the DVD RAM commandset is not the same? (I'm not sure if there is a standard DVD RAM commandset)

Hi th mi,
Now I don't have the time to look for it, but I read somewhere that XP recognizes the drive buth you need to do something in the O/S definitions obout writing CDs.
As XP can write to CDs it has some default definitions you need to see and change.
In the thread I read about this there was the indication about what to do. I'm not sure but I think it was a thread indicating a Thoshiba version of the Panasonic driver.
So this is more likely to be a O/S problem than a driver problem.

Hi agomes

I can not believe that this is a windows XP problem.

The external UJ 845 drive works fine with the Panasonic driver. This drive is in the Mapower MAP-KC51SC1G case:

This case has the Genesys GL811E-04 USB2.0 Chipsatz and Genesys GL711FW FireWireA Chipset.It works with USB and FW without any problems.

The GSA 4166 is in the Mapower MAP-H51C1G case:

This case has also the Genesys GL811E-04 USB2.0 Chipsatz and Genesys GL711FW FireWireA Chipset. This case / drive does not work correctly.

Since both cases use the same chipsets I can not believe this is a Windows XP problem.

In a few hours I'll put the drive in a Win2000 test machine and i will test the drive directly connected to the IDE port, with and without the Panasonic driver...

For the guys that need this DVD-RAM drive, just take a look

HERE

I think you need to HACK the Panasonic DVD-RAM driver to work with non-Panasonic DVD-RAM drives. Look at this thread:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=113829

Or if you're too darned lazy, the guy in this thread already hacked the driver and put it up for download :

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....&highlight=ram

Tried it and it works fine with my 4163B

@karangguni & NetLion:

Since I have a Panasonic UJ-845 DVD Burner, I can install the Panasonic DVD Ram driver with no patches! And I instaled it a few days ago!

Under Windows XP SP2:
The TEAC DV-W24E of my notebook works fine with this driver
The UJ-845 in my externan case works fine (with USB and Firewire)
The GSA 4166 does not work correctly (USB and Firewire)

But actuallyI'm testind the drive itself and the drive works fine, only DVD RAM with the Panasonic driver does not work!

I wrote to BHA Corp and got this answer. so the GSA 4166 is not supported at this moment. Hopefully it will be supported in the future :

Betreff: RE: Problem with DVD RAM driver and 2nd DVD RAM drive / dr.en-4

BHA Support Center

Thank you for your inquiry,

The drive GSA 4166 is unfortunately not supported by DVD-RAM driver. Next
updates will add support for more drives, but we have no exact schedual at
this time.
More(general) suggestions:

Please check the list with supported drives for DVD-RAM Driver:
http://www.bhacorp.com/download/util...am.html#drives

Please install the update for DVD-RAM Driver from here:
http://www.bhacorp.com/download/utilities/dvdram.html

If you have Windows XP with Service Pack 2, please disable the WindowsXP-SP2
burning option:
Right click on the drive in [My Computer], than select [Properties].
Open the [Recording] tab, then disable (uncheck) the [Enable CD recording on
this drive] option.
Click [Apply], than click [OK] to close the Properties window.

Problems when trying to format a DVD-RAM Disk may occur:

1. If you try to format an unformatted disc (a new disc or one erased using
B's Recorder GOLD) on a computer on which Norton AntiVirus is installed,
there is a possibility that Norton Auto-Protect is controlling the disc.
This has also been confirmed by Panasonic, the developer of the DVD-RAM
Driver.
When formatting a DVD-RAM, make sure to disable Norton Auto-Protect.
Alternately, record some data onto it using B's Recorder GOLD so that the
disc is not an unformatted disc, then format it using DVDForm.

Similar problems may occur if other software or tools that exclusively
control the disc are installed on your computer. If you do not have Norton
AntiVirus installed on your computer, try quitting all background running
applications before formatting the DVD-RAM.

2. If there is an unformatted area on the computer hard drive, so just
format it.
If there is an unformatted area on your computer, a drive letter will not be
allocated to the removable disk. The Device Manager will recognize the drive
as two drives; a DVD/CD-ROM drive and a removable drive; but only the
DVD/CD-ROM drive icon will appear in My Computer. Hence, you cannot format a
DVD-RAM disc.

Please also make sure that your Drive supports the disk you use.
(For example the drive LG GSA 4040B does not support 2,6GB DVD-RAM Disks.
Solution: try to update drive’s firmware)

Here you will find more usefull tips to DVD-RAM Driver:
http://www.bhacorp.com/support/faq_dvdram/index.html

Best Regards,
Tobias Escher