Cross-flashing a Sony DW-Q30A?

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers
#1

Boy, do I have a strange one…

I was given a Sony DW-Q30A a few weeks ago. I used Sony’s flasher and upgraded the firmware to YYS7.

All is fine, burns seem to be working okay. However, I want to change the booktype so my DVD+R discs show as DVD-ROMs. No problem, right? I try the booktype setter in DVD Decrypter. It says it changed the book type, and confirms it when queried. However, when I burn a disc, the disk type remains as it “should” be, i.e. DVD+R DL. So I start searching the net for ways to enable the bitsetting properly. I find one indication that Sony and Lite-On use different bitsetting codes, and wonder if that is the problem. I try ImgBurn, and same results.

Okay, I say to myself, perhaps I need to cross-flash it as a Lite-On 1535S. I download the latest factory firmware, and go to use Omnipatcher to get everything set up. But Omnipatcher gives me error messages saying it can’t find the media type list, and therefore it doesn’t allow me to set any patches. Drat. Well, some people have done okay just running the Lite-On flasher, although I’ll still have to work out bitsetting. Okay. Flash I do.

Well, the EEPROM still reads as a Sony, and Windows only marginally recognizes the drive. Much of my DVD software can’t even see the drive. I start freaking. The Sony flasher won’t see the drive either. I run FlashFix on the Sony flasher, and it uses a version of XFlash that’s too new for FlashFix. I freak out some more. Then I find and d/l an older version of the Sony firmware (YYS3), and that flashes okay with FlashFix. I then flash back to YYS7. All is well again.

When I had the drive flashed with Lite-On firmware, I saw max read and write speeds quite a bit higher than what the Sony firmware tells me.

So, questions… First, what on earth was I doing wrong? Is there EEPROM that goes with the firmware when cross-flashing from Sony to Lite-On? Is there special firmware for this? And what was the deal with Omnipatcher? Why wouldn’t it work, using firmware downloaded from Codefreaks and the latest version of Op?

Second, why isn’t bitsetting working for me? I really want to set booktype in the drive itself, so my burner software doesn’t matter. I have stuff I like, and it would bug me to spend money on Nero after getting comfy with the software I have.

Any advice would be appreciated, as well as tech background. I think that the latest Lite-On firmware for the 1635S is better than the Sony firmware, from what I have seen and heard. How do I deal with the non-matching EEPROM data? I have no qualms with cross-flashing as long as it doesn’t kill the drive or make a lot of coasters.

Any advice and assistance is gratefully received. I’m more of a microcontroller/flue injection guy, although I’ve flashed firmware on a lot of hardware over the years (including EFI boxen!) I’m not stupid or technically inept, I’m just under-educated on optical drives.

TIA!

#2

Hi & welcome, azraphale

Can you post a screenshot as below of a DVD+R you’ve burned with YYS7 firmware?

PIONEER_DVD-RW__DVR-111D_8.29_01-December-2006_20_16.png641×537 23.2 KB

#3

OK, you just search for permamanent bitsetting available and know the difference between disctype and booktype?!?

#4

I misspoke. Sorry to hit your critical mode; if you’re going to criticize, perhaps you could also include a USEFUL contribution to the thread, “chef”? Just a thought.

Thanks for the welcome, Cressida. :slight_smile: I looked at the Verbatim single-layer discs, and they are behaving as I’d hoped – booktype lists as DVD-ROM. But here’s a screen shot from DVDInfoPro on Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL metal azo:

I should note that I tried using DVD Decrypter’s Lite-On bitsetting tool before burning the DL disc. I then tried Lite-On’s tool which said the booktype was already changed to DVD-ROM for +R/RW and +R DL. Then I flashed the 1635S firmware so I could try the tools again, andwith the drive half-“broken”, both of those bitsetting tools also indicated DVD-ROM booktype already was set. I flashed back to YYS7 via the convoluted process in my original post, and reset the booktype using DVD Decrypter’s Lite-On bitsetter. I have not yet burned another DL disc, so it may be that somewhere along the line I somehow got the right combination of things in the right order and fixed it through voodoo. I will burn another DL disc and see how it comes out.

I would incidentally like to upgrade to the 1635S firmware for its better media comptibility, drive speed, and improved burn strategies. It makes ne nervous that Omnipatcher can’t seem to handle any of the firmware I throw at it (even firmware from a year or two ago), and that there appears to be some very strange stuff going on when you just flash the firmware onto the Sony drive (maybe to do with the EEPROM?). If I can get it to work properly, I’d still like to cross-flash.

#5

Dang, weird. Here’s a second burn with the same Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL:

I dunno what I did that made this work, but there it is.

Hey… I see a series of write descriptors on the first burn that aren’t on the second. I was pretty sure I did “disc at once” for both burns, but I suppose I might have checked “close disc” without checking “disc at once”; would that do it? It would make sense if the drive thought there might be another session getting recorded, and thus left the booktype as a DVD+R so that it would not error if you tried to write to it…

PEBKAC strikes again? :wink: I think that may be the culprit. I’m going to see if I can’t get that first disc to finalize with software and see if that makes it switch booktype. I’d still be interested in upgrading the firmware, and am still wondering what got so FUBARed in my previous attempts…

#6

I was not sure what you meant… One time it sounded like you looked for permanent bitsetting and the next time that disctype and booktype were mixed up. :X

5th Generation Standard (5S)

[B]SHW-1635S[/B] (16x+R, 8x+RW, 8x+R9, 16x-R, 6x-RW, 4x-R9)
LITE-ON DVDRW SHW-1635S Firmwares: rpc1.org, official, codeguys
DVDRW DRW-5S163
[B]SONY DVD RW DW-Q30A[/B]
GIGABYTE GO-W1623A

http://codeguys.rpc1.org/firmwares.html#SHW-1635S

#7

Hi again,

Crossflashing should be as easy as downloading and running the “flashfixed” version of YS0Z.stock from codeguys.rpc1.org (linked by [B]chef[/B] above). If you then apply the LiteOn Booktype Tool once (with a blank DVD+R in the drive) the setting will be stored in EEPROM and you won’t have to worry about it again. All your future DVD+R burns will be DVD-ROM. Do the verification with Nero CD-DVD Speed, as shown in my previous post.

Note 1. OmniPatcher does not work with 5S and 6S series drives.
Note 2. Bitsetting of DVD+R DL is automatic on LiteOn/Sony drives, no need to apply any changes in ImgBurn or whatever. I don’t know what the problem is with DVD Info Pro, I never used it.

Good luck in getting it sorted!

#8

Thanks. :smiley: So far, so good, I believe. Will back up the current firmware and try cross-flashing again, and hopefully it works this time. You did answer my one big question, though; why I was having trouble with OmniPatcher. :wink: Thanks for the heads-up; I didn’t see where this was mentioned anywhere previously.

Thanks to everyone for the community and the effort. It’s muchly appreciated!