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Upgrade Doubles +R Speed For Some Lite-On Drives
Binsbergen writes "Owners of a Lite-On 451S (lowest price $ 69.50) and a Lite-On 851S can load the firmware of the Lite-On 832S and burn their DVD+Rs at 8x speed and also write to double-layer media. Before this seemed impossible, because many manufacturers have told us that upgrading a 4x drive to a double-layer writer was impossible due hardware differences. Of course it's important to note that 'overclocking' voids your warrantee and should be done after have carefully read the instructions. Read more about the procedure, the results and others experiences in the official 451S@832S, 851S@832S -- It works! thread. That's a dirt-cheap upgrade!" (Sounds similar to the NEC upgrade mentioned in May.)
I have the NEC 2500 that can be firmware-upgraded to the 2510 dual-layer model. People have been reporting that the new firmware works fine, but no one on any of the message boards has yet verified that dual-layer DVDs burned with the new firmware will play on standard DVD players. I'd be curious about the same issue with Lite-On models until there is more testing.
Also, dual-layer media is still very expensive. A DL disc costs much more than twice as much as a single-layer.
Modding is fun and often a means to usher legacy hardware/software into a state where it can compete with newer generation hardware/software. Examples of good modding can be found in the Debian Familliar distribution, which allows old-skool iPaqs to run a far more robust operating system than the first-wave Pocket PC software, and you end up with a PDA competent to PPC 2k2.
As a child, I once modded a first-generation Mr. Speak and Spell to curse at me in German. I was the envy of the entire chess club.
"You and your third dimension."
Actually the 832s at newegg is $86 with free shipping. After you add shipping to the $69 price of the 451, it turns into $79. So you save $7 and void your warranty... definitely not worth it. Also, the upgrade only upgrades burning of +R discs at 8x not -R.
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aside from the "fun factor", is there any real point to doing it?
education, learning, exploring; tackling a challenge and the resulting sense of accomplishment (when it works); fighting back against 'the man' who would use technology for customer control. Hackers who know how things work make better shoppers who can cut thru marketing bullcrap, thus contributing to a more efficient and honest capitalist marketplace, promoting freedom and the persuit of happiness throughout the universe.
Some of the worlds greatest inventors, like Tesla, Edison, Watt, Volt, Amp, Henry and Ohm were hackers who enjoyed experimenting with consumer products to see if they could be made to do things prohibited by law.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
i work for sony dvd/cd-rw support. the firmware update for the 530a and the 530ul doubles the write speed. but don't buy one. nearly every call that comes into the center is about a 530 that has died for abolutely no reason. they either die completely or just one function dies. cds will read and write but dvds won't; other times its oposite. a lot of times they are dead right out of the box. then to get it RMAed you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and call in 10 times. its retarded and i try to bypass as much of the bullshit as i can when people call in but if i don't do certain things in the process i get in trouble. sony added all these hoops because they were getting so many drives returned they needed to slow the flow down.
One of the reasons the ONLY difference between the high end and low end versions of somthing is it's cheaper for them to cover both markets that way. You only need one factory line to produce both units. As a plus you can wait till just before final packaging and shipping to burn in the firmware giving them some more flexibility to adjust the ratio's of the various 'levels' to fit changeing market demand. In theory the money they save this way can be partialy passed on to the consumer, and partialy used for increasing proffit.
You see this sort of thing all over the place were companies produce a product and sell it at various prices under different lables to maximize proffits and minimize costs. Many of the 'house' brands in your local grocery store or department store are actually just re-labled high-dollar brands.
Mycroft
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Joke though it may be, you actually can. Yes, there was once a trick of connecting a trace on Celeron CPUs that would double the cache, thereby making it the equivalent of the more expensive Pentiums (I believe I read of this in the P3 days, though).
There were plenty of comments by people saying that the extra cache could be marginal, leading Intel to disable it and re-market the chips as Celerons, but I never heard follow-ups from anyone who tried it.
Personally, with hacks like moding a processor, and especially with Flashing the firmware on your already cheap DVD Recorders, I leave that to other people. My experimenting days have long passed, as I've learned there is a very high level of risk, not much return (DVD-9 drives will only be a few bucks more than current DVD drives in a month or so) and I've had more than my share of bad luck.
A tip to every... Firmware upgrades like this sound too good to be true for a reason. Don't even consider going out and buying this device, with plans of upgrading. Chances are you'll get one that is just slightly different, or doesn't work properly after the upgrade. I would only even think about suggesting this for those that already have the drives, and are prepared to throw it away and buy a new one...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
or just like how right wing fundamentalists keep making america less and less a "land of the free" .. not because they necessarily should, but because they can.