New NEC 3540, Poor Results?, please help incase I need to send it back!

madbaker 2005-07-13 10:55:05 UTC #1

Hi,

Well I finally took the plunge & got the NEC 3540 drive to replace my Liteon 451s.

It has just arrived today & the first DVD-R that I wrote was a Ritek G05, the results were not too bad, with a PI of no higher than 90.. nothing stunning but an improvement on my LiteOn drive.

However I am now VERY confused & I dont know whether to keep the drive or send it back as the results below seem very bad.

Also I dont know if this is normal or not, but the drive LED is green & doesnt turn to a different colour to indicate its burning like my LiteOn does, but more so than that is that when the drive light comes on, it makes my HD light stay on, its like the 2 are working in tandem, when its reading, or burning I cant see my HD light flicker anymore to indicate activity as its matching what the led on the NEC is doing, is that weird or what?

Anyway, here are some results...

(Ridisc) CMC MAG AE1 8x DVD-R (burned at 8x)

It was scanned using the NEC 3540 drive.

I then put the disc in my Liteon 451s>812s & this is the KProbe result.

I then tried running the disc through the speed test on the NEC drive, this was the result.

(Ridisc) Ritek Extreme A+++ G05 DVD-R 8x (burned at 8x)

Again this was scanned using the NEC 3540.

Now the same disc scanned using the LiteOn.

(Taiyo Yuden) TYG02 DVD-R 8x (Burned at 8x)

Also scanned using the NEC.

Now the same disc scanned using the LiteOn.

After these scans I read about the ECC rate, so I changed it from 8 to 1 like you all say on this forum but its only made a marginal difference to the CMC MAG scan above.

The results seem all over the place, the speed test indeed indicates that the DVD has problems reading because of the high errors, but then again it plays fine in my very fussy DVD player downstairs.

What do you all think of these results? have I got a duff drive? or something else? I got this drive after seeing everyones really low results on here, but I dont seem to be getting anything like what I have seen on here.

Any help would be appreciated as I can still send this back for a refund or a different make, it was either this or the Pioneer 109.

Thankyou!
Nick :-o

DeadMan 2005-07-13 11:23:55 UTC #2

Looks like a bad drive but what you might try is first changing the firmware to Dee's W5 and using MS IDE drivers and making sure they are set to DMA mode.

madbaker 2005-07-13 11:27:25 UTC #3

I just checked, im using MS IDE drivers, but I didnt want to flash the drive incase anything went wrong as I couldnt exchange it.

zevia 2005-07-13 11:34:55 UTC #4

I believe the original FW 1.01 really needs to be improved (ie not good). If you are comparing with other scans you mentioned above, you need to flash with 1.W5 or 1.01e. Quikee made some scans with stock 1.01 and the result is also not good. http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=138916

Dee 2005-07-13 15:20:54 UTC #5

The drive is not scanning well, thats for sure.
For some reason flashing a firmware to a drive twice can cure this problem.
Quite why this happens i have no idea.

XND1n01h 2005-07-13 15:59:30 UTC #6

That's true Dee, for some reason I keep on flashing the drive twice :bigsmile:.
But the question here is this how many flashes can the drive take?...

Dee 2005-07-13 16:39:40 UTC #7

Well, lets take 1.W4 firmware as an example.
1.W4 had 9 different builds before i was happy with it, each one flashed to my drive and tested in some way.
The average is around 5-7 builds per firmware version. Our 3520 firmware is now on its 17th version, so thats a lot of flashing. The drive is still working BTW.
It's beleived the type of flash memory in NEC drives should be able to take about 500 flashes. But i don't think anyone has tried this

XND1n01h 2005-07-13 16:45:06 UTC #8

I know that I've had more than 100 flashes, I'm just not satisfied with my recent TY results... who is? So I'm stuck at modding and flashing :p.

DarnCrazy 2005-07-13 20:27:03 UTC #9

I guess I'm not the only one who getting these terrible scan results. I was using a Lite-On SOHW-812S which I always burned 4x RITEK R02 DVD+R, because I bought over 200 for friggin cheap. And the quality of the burns were are always fairly good.

Now that I bought the NEC ND-3540a I was hoping to get scan with the same, or simliar results, after chaning the ECC 1, but I still get beyond crappy results. Should I be worried that my 3540 won't be able to read that media? I have over 80 burned DVDs of the Ritek R02 and still want to be able READ them if my Lite-On dies anytime soon (which is may because it's acting up). That brings me to another question, if the 3540a has this bad of time reading the Ritek R02, will it even be able to burn them? I still have 100 Ritek R02 DVD+Rs left....

Now when it comes to flashing the 3540a, I'm rather hesitant to flash it to the unofficial firmware because I just got the drive Today and don't want to void the warrenty...and I'm kinda afraid I'll mess it up by flashing it incorrectly, beacuse I've never used any flashing software (other than Lite-On's). I'm a n00b in the flashing arena...

Any Clue on how to deal with this besides flashing? Or is flashing the only way?

Anyways, here are the scan results...

meff 2005-07-13 20:31:48 UTC #10

Looks like you have the same problem..

Can anyone confirm flashing twice fixes this problem? I, too, dual-flash my drives ever since Dee has said it has made her drives work better..

Too bad we'll probably never get an official word on the dual flashing.

BriotMAN 2005-07-13 20:58:11 UTC #11

What do you all mean by dual flashing.
Just take the stock firmware and flash it again to the drive?

Or is it more complex?

DarnCrazy 2005-07-13 22:25:06 UTC #12

I'm not to sure about dual-flashing myself, but it seems to just that, you flash it twice with the same firmware. However that doesn't really apply in this case, because you can't download the original firmware...at least I haven't found a place to download it....

And an update on how well the Nec ND-3540a w/stock firmware burns Ritek R02 DVD+Rs....and as you can see below...the older Lite-On SOHW-812S burns it much better than the 3540a...which is rather sad...

RickDriver 2005-07-14 00:51:14 UTC #13

You can download the firmware here. Liggy's 101e firmware has an original firmware with no bitsetting.

DarnCrazy 2005-07-14 01:13:01 UTC #14

@ RickDriver

So what from you're telling me, I can flash the 3540a using Liggy 1.01e, and if I'm still having problems with the drive, I'll still be able to RMA it (assuming the flash goes well)?

Dee 2005-07-14 01:48:23 UTC #15

Use Binflash to dump your original firmware to your hard drive, then you can flash back to your original firmware.

techman 2005-07-14 05:11:31 UTC #16

This is some scans of some IS01 001 (cheap media!!) burned on my NEC 3540 burned at 4x as you can see the first scan read on the 3540 is not very good at all.
The second scan is the same disk read on a liton SHOW-1653S as you can see there is a marked improvement in the results. With better media the margin of difference narrows but still remains to some extent, all I can say is that the writing capabilities of the 3540 are good but the reading / scanning abilities are a bit inconsistent at the moment hopefully a firmware update may improve the situation in time.

BriotMAN 2005-07-14 07:28:37 UTC #17

Is the 1.01e by Liggy considered an Official firmware?
If I flash it will i void my warranty?

Dee 2005-07-14 07:46:48 UTC #18

No it's not official, and yes it will void your warranty.

BriotMAN 2005-07-14 07:51:26 UTC #19

But I read somewhere in this forum that there is a newer stock firmware
and its called 1.01e because its the fifth..?

My firware is stock one dated 27/04/2005, Is there a newer stock firmware
that wont void my warranty?

And another question, if I flash an un official firmware, can I flash the stock
one back so I will get my warranty back?

thanks.

Dee 2005-07-14 07:53:00 UTC #20