To answer some of your questions, yes Mount Rainier can be implemented in the firmware of many drives that dont natively support Mt Rainier. There are some prerequisites, but almost any modern drive that supports packet writing and buffer undderrun protection (ie the ability to accurately store and return to media locations) meets them. Of course it needs to write to a media whose format supports Mt Rainier.
In theory any modern CDRW drive (with decent short-gap "buffer undderrun protection") could be upgraded to Mt Rainier, provided it had enough capacity in its F/W chip to store the code (most are only 1-2Mb). I'd be suprise if it were any different for DVD+.
The DVD- format, for a number of reasons, is exclusive with Mt Rainier provisions for random access, defect management and background formatting - there will never be a Mt Rainier DVD-RW drive, its impossible!
Mt Rainier was designed from the outstart primarily for CDRW (along with some more obscure optomag formats) and +RW was designed from the start to be compatible with Mt Rainier.
Of course having said all that I'm dubious Sony will put in the effort to produce Mt Rainier firmware for an already released product, in fact I've never seen a manufacturer do that.
It's correct that Longhorn has been slated by M$ to $upport Mt Rainier natively.
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To answer some of your questions, yes Mount Rainier can be implemented in the firmware of many drives that dont natively support Mt Rainier. There are some prerequisites, but almost any modern drive that supports packet writing and buffer undderrun protection (ie the ability to accurately store and return to media locations) meets them. Of course it needs to write to a media whose format supports Mt Rainier. In theory any modern CDRW drive (with decent short-gap "buffer undderrun protection") could be upgraded to Mt Rainier, provided it had enough capacity in its F/W chip to store the code (most are only 1-2Mb). I'd be suprise if it were any different for DVD+. The DVD- format, for a number of reasons, is exclusive with Mt Rainier provisions for random access, defect management and background formatting - there will never be a Mt Rainier DVD-RW drive, its impossible! Mt Rainier was designed from the outstart primarily for CDRW (along with some more obscure optomag formats) and +RW was designed from the start to be compatible with Mt Rainier. Of course having said all that I'm dubious Sony will put in the effort to produce Mt Rainier firmware for an already released product, in fact I've never seen a manufacturer do that. It's correct that Longhorn has been slated by M$ to $upport Mt Rainier natively.