In House Review - Sony CRX210A1 48/12/48 CD-RW

[dhc014]

Would you please send me the CRX215 firmware as well?
dhc014@firmware-flash.com

I tried. It got returned. ??

--Rodheb

Yeah, there are some problems with email on the new server, try sending it to [email], thanks.

[Fuct]

dhc014 or Ian (or anyone else who might know), is the CRX210A(48x/12x/48x) overclockable to the CRX215A (48x/24x/48x) by flashing the drive with the now-available Sony CRX215A firmware? I suppose this would allow the use of the Turbo-Boost feature to be kept but would also enable 24x rewriting speeds... something that could come in handy
2 questions though about the CRX215A: Is the Turbo-Boost feature still used to go from 40x -> 48x for writing and reading? and is there Mount Rainier support on this drive? (the CRX210A was supposed to have it but is in fact lacking that too). Thanks for your help

[Ian]

I'm not sure about the Turbo Boost. It is listed in some of the specs online. You'd have to ask Rodheb to make sure. I haven't OC'd the 210 to a 215 yet.

[rodheb]

Yes, the Turbo Boost is still there, and needs to be used for both reading and writing, at least that's what Drivespeed and EZCD Creator would have me believe.

As far as Mt Rainier support, I don't know. Where would it tell me? Nero info? Let me know how I can determine for sure the drive/firmware supports Mt Rainier, and I'll try it and let you know.

--Rodheb

[Ian]

InfoTool or Nero should tell you. I think Nero is a little more accurate. Just go to the Choose Recorder window.

[rodheb]

dhc014 or Ian (or anyone else who might know), is the CRX210A(48x/12x/48x) overclockable to the CRX215A (48x/24x/48x) by flashing the drive with the now-available Sony CRX215A firmware? I suppose this would allow the use of the Turbo-Boost feature to be kept but would also enable 24x rewriting speeds... something that could come in handy

Well, I have the 215 drive, and used the LiteOn 52/24/52 firmware that was used successfully with a 210 drive, so I'm guessing that the 215 straight-up will work for your 210. If you still want it to show up as a 210, yet give you all the functionality of the 215 (including possible mt rainier support -- will check that later when I get home from work -- in the process of switching pc's and still have the old one with the old 24/10/40 drive going with remote desktop at home), I modified my firmware and flashed successfully so that my base 215 firmware shows the drive as a 210 and I can send to you. The only reason I did so was so that CDRWin would work, as it supports the 210, but not the 215 -- apparently, it ONLY looks at the drive ID string when deciding if it will work or not.
Oh, and by the way, the 215 firmware is now available? Where? I must not know where it wandered off to. Glad to help, but I don't want to miss something here.

2 questions though about the CRX215A: Is the Turbo-Boost feature still used to go from 40x -> 48x for writing and reading? and is there Mount Rainier support on this drive? (the CRX210A was supposed to have it but is in fact lacking that too). Thanks for your help

As I mentioned before, yes, turbo-boost still for reading and writing, and I'll check Mt Rainier when I get home.

--Rodheb

[Fuct]

Cool rodheb, I appreciate the info. The CRX215A firmware should be available if you have the drive... it's the original firmware that came with your drive! If you happened to have made a backup copy of your original firmware (from when you got the drive) BEFORE making any firmware changes or flashing it at all... basically, the firmware that will change my CRX210A to a CRX215A and display it as a CRX215A with 48/24/48x speeds.

(I think this is possibly the firmware you sent to dhc014? Could be mistaken...)

[rodheb]

Cool rodheb, I appreciate the info. The CRX215A firmware should be available if you have the drive... it's the original firmware that came with your drive! If you happened to have made a backup copy of your original firmware (from when you got the drive) BEFORE making any firmware changes or flashing it at all... basically, the firmware that will change my CRX210A to a CRX215A and display it as a CRX215A with 48/24/48x speeds.

(I think this is possibly the firmware you sent to dhc014? Could be mistaken...)

Oh, I thought you meant available as in posted somewhere. Of course it's available to me as I bought the drive. I did back it up before messing with it, and sent it to ian and dhc014. Runs like a champ now with cdrwin, with the original firmware copied, modified, and flashed to make cdrwin think it's a 210.

Nero info tool says that Mt Rainier is NOT supported. No checkbox checked. I guess that'll be a letdown to some folks, but I don't really care about packet writing anyway, so no skin off my back. (The "choose recorder" in Nero 5.5.9.9 did not display any info on Mt Rainier, so I couldn't quote that as evidence to support or deny)

Hope this has been informative for you, as it has been for me.
Any more questions about the drive, or if you want the firmware, even w/o the Mt Rainier support, lemme know. I'm all about helping out.

--Rodheb

[Fuct]

Cool, thanks for the update. Yea Mt. Rainier is not too important to me either, but I was wondering about it because the CRX210A was supposed to have it but didn't, so maybe they had slipped it in with this one, but it seems Sony's out of the game with Mt. Rainier.

I'll send you a PM with my email address, I'd like a copy of that original CRX215A firmware that you have. I don't really know too much about flashing and what not, so I'll wait to hear of any successful CRX210 -> CRX215 results before attempting anything..

[Fuct]

Hey, on a side note, how are you enjoying the Sony drive? Have you been getting good burning results? What media have you found to work well with the drive, and at what burning speeds?

I haven't even really had a chance to use my burner too much, it's not on my home computer at the moment (needed to install it on another office computer to burn a few things). However I have some Fuji 24x media (should burn at 40x) and a couple of Verbatim 48x discs that I plan on doing some test burns on this weekend. I'll let you know of the results.. or get them added to TheWizard's media list.

[mcmail]

I have a few edited Liteon firmwares here:

http://kickme.to/sony210

[rodheb]

I have a few edited Liteon firmwares here:

http://kickme.to/sony210

Cool, that's the page I used to assist me in updating my firmware. Thanks so much. I had to put a 210 in the firmware in place of my 215 to make CDRWin recognize that it could write to my drive.

I noticed three places in the firmware, though, that had the drive ID, and changed them all. Apparently, the third place is unnecessary, but there was a third, in case you hadn't found it.

--RodHeb

[mcmail]

yeah there is actually 4 references but two of them are "back-to-front so to speak and two are not needed.

HEX lines D00 and D90 (not needed)

and

125A8 and 12538 (needed)

thats why I have only done the CRX210E1 (52x24x52) and not done a CRX220E1 as this does not exist yet.

[rodheb]

Maybe this deserves its own topic, but since this discussion has kind of led to talk of several SONY cd writers, here goes ...

I have a 24/10/40 Sony cd writer in my old pc (XP Pro), and when I go to look at the DMA properties, I find that it is operating in "Ultra DMA Mode 2", which is good, since that supports up to 33.3 MB/sec data transfer rate. On my new pc (XP Pro), I have the 48/24/48 Sony cd writer. When I look at the DMA properties, I find that it is operating in "Multi-word DMA mode 2". I find this rather alarming, since maximum speed of that transfer mode is only 16.6 MB/sec. Is this a better transfer mode for a cd writer? Do I need to flip something in my BIOS to achieve the faster max speed? For 48X speeds, does it even matter (without doing the math myself)? My hard drive is on the primary channel, and it's operating in Ultra DMA Mode 5, which is 100 MB/sec, so my system should support the 33.3 MB/sec mode. Does anyone else find this?

Any comments would be appreciated.

--RodHeb

[mcmail]

my sony 48x24x48 speed shows Ultra DMA Mode 2 in xp maybe your bios needs to be checked ? is your CDR the only thing on a primary or secondary channel?

[rodheb]

my sony 48x24x48 speed shows Ultra DMA Mode 2 in xp maybe your bios needs to be checked ? is your CDR the only thing on a primary or secondary channel?

Hard drive is the only thing (for now -- 'til I move my data drive off the old PC) on the primary, and the CDR is the only thing on the secondary. Could it be the cable? I used the one that came in the box with the CDR for connecting the CDR, and the cable that came with the HD to connect the HD. The BIOS seems to only have auto or disable for each device as far as DMA goes. I guess I'll have to do some drive-swapping tonight to get to the bottom of this.

--RodHeb

[trunksalan]

Hey guys
i'm new here
i have the crx210e1.
When i first got it, it worked perfectly, but a few weeks after the burner wouldn't burn at 48 or 40x, the progress in nero would just hang at 2% and i would have to restart the computer with the power button(windows wouldn't let me shut down either when this happens). Also burning with cdclone, it use to only take me less than 3 min to burn a cd image from the computer, now it takes me about 5 mins to burn.
Does someone have an explaination or solution to this problem?
Does updating the firmware to the newer firmware on the sony site fix this problem??


OH yeah and how to i set the dma settings in windows xp pro?
i can't seem to find it even though i looked everywhere in the device manager.

[dodecahedron]

check out the FAQ:
How to enable DMA in Windows XP (with pictures)
Problems enabling DMA in Windows XP