Computer Technicians 202.5: Optical Drives and Firmware Flashing

The other side of the fence

Along with all the abilities of their official counterparts, unofficial firmware has a couple of advanced settings that come in handy for advanced users. Unofficial firmware comes from either single enthusiasts who understand the inner workings of a drive and want to give it a little extra oomph, or a group of people who organize entire portals dedicated to flash firmware. However, there’s a slight catch to it. Most of those abilities, while deemed only normal and fair for the end user, fall into a very gray area. Among the first abilities integrated into them is RPC-1 playback, which effectively removes region control, enabling you to watch a DVD purchased anywhere in the world. Generally considered an annoyance by virtually every user, region control can be partially circumvented by a reflash – the rest has to be fixed via the operating system. The second ability usually gained from a flash firmware is riplocking. Most DVD drives are locked from reading the medium with over 4x or 5x. While it does have the adavantage of keeping the drive quieter, riplock doesn’t let you copy data off the DVD at maximum speed – effectively hurting you even if you’re a legit DVD owner. To circumvent that, firmware with riplock removed will let you replay both pressed and recorded DVDs at higher speeds, at the cost of more noise from the drive, something you shouldn’t go for in a home theater PC, but could go for if your machine’s primarily for games or business, where you can survive an extra minute of noisy disk spinning. The final ability that can be gained through aftermarket firmware is bitsetting, which allows you to burn a DVD+R or +RW and have it introduce itself to the reader as a -R or -RW media, in an effort to minimize incompatibility. This is especially useful for older standalone components which generally can’t be reflashed, so having a bit-set DVD can be effective in helping the standalone replay the DVD.

Occupational hazards revisited

If you have read our previous article, you know all the hazards of wrong flashing, but let’s just restate them and introduce a couple of differences. If you start flashing and power goes out, you’re dead in the water. If you flash it with incompatible firmware, there are three possible outcomes. You might be able to reflash the drive without trouble, in which case you should thank your luck for saving you from your own error. On the other hand, the drive might be unflashable, but might have a connector that an electronics engineer can connect to and flash it externally, much like the BIOS could be reprogrammed. Finally, you might just be out of luck and become the proud owner of a block of metal with chips inside.

Again, as with flashing BIOSes, in some cases you have the luxury of an in-OS flasher, in others you’ll need DOS (bootdisk) flashers. As an example, official NEC firmwares need bootdisks, while aftermarket ones are bundled with BinFlash, a Windows-borne program that can back up your old firmware and flash the new one with much less hassle. BinFlash can be used with official firmware as well, provided you have the time and will to fish it out from the internet.
Despite those risks, there is one exception where you are allowed to flash your drive with “incorrect” firmware. Often, a drive with a company sticker on it isn’t actually manufactured by them, and might in fact have a Toshiba, NEC or LiteOn mechanism inside; in other words, it’s just been rebranded as another company. In that case, searching around the internet for your drive’s firmware can land you onto a different brand’s list of firmware – which is all well because the mechanisms are literally identical, and therefore cross-flashable.

Flashing: a conclusion

While most hardware nowadays gets its bugs patched through drivers, firmware flashing is the lowest level of upgrade you can do as a technician – for one, because it actually deals with the hardware without having to solder anything, and because some things just can’t be fixed through drivers, especially with optical drives, since they all use a generic driver. UNlike a BIOS flash, if done properly, a drive flash will net you faster performance almost immediately, and let you get the maximum out of either your own drive, or your customer’s drive, should you ever encounter one that wants to achieve something above the average with their computer.

 
Written by Boris M