Sony DRU-500A Firmware Question:

[PALMela HANDerson]

Hello, there. Thank you all again for your past assistance. I really appreciate it. I have another question concerning firmware upgrades: Are they permanent? I mean... even after you reformat, would they still exist? For example, if I went from 1.0d to 1.0f, and then reformatted, would the firmware version still be 1.0f? The reason that I am asking is because I am going to see if 1.0f or 1.0g is better for me. Thank you, again. Good-bye.

[Krell]

I know you are pretty intellegent, I read all of you posts back in the religion thread days. So I want to make it clear that I, in no way want to insult your intellegence when I say, YOU are on shaky ground.

The fact that you ask that question tells me the level of understanding. Granted, you will probably be able to warrenty this device, even if it is irrevocably damaged.

Few times will you see the need on a new device to risk failure on a firmware upgrade. This is the hardware equivelent of a BIOS flash. Unless you see a post stating that a firmware upgrade will solve a certain problem, I dont advise you do it.

To be most specific, YES once you upgrade firmware, it has NOTHING to do with the rest of your systems configurations, it resides right on the device itself. If the upgrade fails, it can be totally unrecoverable for you.

[PALMela HANDerson]

..., thank you, Krell. Yes, I was on shaky ground. Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb at (Firmware for me, evidently). I understand it has been a WHILE since this question was addressed by yourself, but thank you.

[Theinfamousone]

LOL, I have that drive and I've updated the firmware faithfully with each update they have out. I'm on 2.0e or 2.0f or something now, I guess I'll stop. I am having all kinds of random problems with it though, otherwise I wouldn't have tried fixing what wasn't broken, but it has compatibility problems like none other, both reading and writing and I get all kinds of strange things that happen. For instance, I popped in a DVD I made a few months ago with some videos on it, the videos came right up and I started watching them. Then my brother takes it out for 10 seconds when I got up and I put it back in because I hadn't finished watching the video, and it wouldn't read it. It just thought the disc was blank, nothing was on the disc. I have several discs that this has happend to. Nero completely hates burning DVD-Rs with the drive and so I just use Easy CD Creator because the ASPI is more compatible, but still I get problems. Granted I am using 60 cent Princo discs, but my friend has the same drive and same discs and never has problems. Sony won't help me because they want me to use RecordNow and only support discs that cost $6 each. Oh well, I'll just sell it in a few months.

[Krell]

While I too have updated firmware, as many of you have, the VERY time I say "go for it" hers will fail, its Murphys Law.

Also, upgrading firmware does help if your REAL problem is that you dont have DMA enabled, or the correct chipset drivers for the Mother Board.

I just say, dont do it for the fun of it, and do it as a last resort if you are having problems.