DrunkenNinja Posted December 6, 2012 Posted December 6, 2012 I have been running some tests on my 5250 CB PLUS and noticing that the 2nd layer of the ricoh media I am using is coming out pretty terrible, It still early days having only burnt 3 discs with the same settings but wanted to get my hands on the new firmware and maybe a list of revisions/improvements... unfortunately the only place I can find it is primera and they require a password... Does anyone have any feedback on the new firmware? It appears to run in Overspeed according to the scans, and where I might find the file?
LIGHTNING UK! Posted December 6, 2012 Posted December 6, 2012 Yup, the 2nd layer on them isn't great. The start of the 1st isn't as good as I'd hope for either if I'm honest! Stick with MKM-003-00 I don't think the firmware has many changes, a (semi cosmetic) bug I reported was fixed and they added the full bitsetting support I asked for. I don't really know why I even bothered to do more tests/scans with 1.Z8. I'm afraid I was asked not to make the download public, it's just available via their (Primera/Vinpower) support teams. Sorry
DrunkenNinja Posted December 6, 2012 Author Posted December 6, 2012 (edited) Cheers for the info LUK I will keep an eye open for the public version... I had the Aones singing a lovely tune at x2.4 speed (MCSE) on my burner max iHAS but once I went up to x4 they got all glitchy, I guess you can only push them so far, I'm gonna burn 3 in a row with the OPC on now to see how that fairs, that 2nd layer can't get any worse... The MKM001 and MKM003 discs are superior in every way but that would not be any fun now would it p.s. one other small thing I noticed, my Optiarc seems to stop burning around the layer break with the buffers nearly completly depleted, no big thing I guess but the iHAS never did this... Edited December 6, 2012 by DrunkenNinja
LIGHTNING UK! Posted December 6, 2012 Posted December 6, 2012 The device buffer you mean? The drive performs some sort of walking opc to adjust the laser power every now any then (especially when starting out, switching speeds / layers etc.). For some reason, when they do that, they make the buffer look like it's empty. You can notice it more looking at the IBG data in DVDInfoPro - focus on the white 'Write Buffer %' line. I did ask if 2.4x could be made available for the RICOH/MKM-003 discs and 4x for the MKM-001 disc, but nothing has come of it. Perhaps in a future release.
DrunkenNinja Posted December 7, 2012 Author Posted December 7, 2012 (edited) It was actually effecting both buffers (to the point they had to recover - I think), I will need to keep an eye on it though cause it seems to tie in with the downgrade of quality on the 2nd layer. Is there anyway to change the settings of the OPTIARC? something simular to the (EEPROM the iHAS uses), it feels so limited when burning a disc with the OPTIARC, like if something goes wrong there is not much you can do except switch the OPC on or off. I contacted Primera last night to see if I could have access to the 1.Z8 firmware but I was politely told that it would only be accesable if I had a Primera Bravo model which makes sense I guess. I will flash Liggy's unlocked 1.Z7 revision for now, then maybe mess around with the drives speed settings in MCSE to test cheaper media at lower speeds like I did with my iHAS. I am now trying to contact the vinpowerdigital in the hope that they might link me to the 1.Z8 firmware since I bought it from them. Edited December 7, 2012 by DrunkenNinja
LIGHTNING UK! Posted December 7, 2012 Posted December 7, 2012 The main buffer level shouldn't be affected by which bit of the disc is being burnt, it's filled by a different thread. If it dropped off to the point where buffer recovery came into play, it's probably just that something happened on your machine and it stopped the flow of data for a while - or you've modified the buffer recovery settings and it's now kicking in when it shouldn't do. Sorry, there are no nice eeprom type settings for Optiarc drives. They're just plug 'n' play and you have to rely on the write strategies in the firmware. The point is though, things aren't supposed to go wrong I've got some FalconMedia DL's on order. They're meant to use the RICOH MID (and be the best version of it). So if the strats were built around those, I might see some better results. As mentioned at MyCE, MCSE doesn't support these firmwares yet.
Sigma Posted December 23, 2012 Posted December 23, 2012 I'll ask this here as it doesn't seem worth starting another thread for..... I'm waiting on a couple of these drives to arrive from the US. Is 1.Z8 the firmware that's pre-installed on them and if not, where can I download a firmware update? I can't find firmware downloads for this drive anywhere. Thanks.
LIGHTNING UK! Posted December 23, 2012 Posted December 23, 2012 I don't think it's publicly available yet. Primera have it on their website but it requires a developers SDK account in order to get at it. Vinpower have it but I've heard their support aren't very forthcoming. I've seen threads where other people have received drives already flashed with 1.Z8, so hopefully you'll be ok. Just worry about where you can get it from if you aren't
Sigma Posted December 24, 2012 Posted December 24, 2012 (edited) Both drives turned up today and both have 1.Z8 pre-flashed. Edited December 24, 2012 by Sigma
Recommended Posts