Pioneer DVR-111D: TDB Flasher fails(No UDMA=>Kernel wanted!)

[-CO-Windler]

I employ a historical PC built from finest DOS age hardware with 2 genuine ISA sound cards, Voodoo 1 graphics accelerator, a 550MHz AMD K6-3+ CPU and 384MB RAM. The machine runs Windows 98SE, and due to it is optimized for historical games I will not upgrade it to modern hardware.

Recently my SCSI CD burner Ricoh RW7060S died (dead laser diode?), so I bought a used Pioneer DVR-111D. I employ CeQuadrat WinOnCD 3.7 for "PacketCD" UDF on CDR (the only program that supports UDF on CDR instead of RW). After re-installing it, I got PacketCD to work. However the burner had firmware 1.06 for DVR-111D, and I want to crossflash it to DVR-111L to enable DVD-RAM.

The bad thing is that the TDB flasher always reports the error "Unable to Set Kernel Mode". I read in forums that this error occurs when UDMA mode 4 is not enabled. However my PC does not support UDMA! It has a historical DFI K6-BV3+/66 mainboard (the world most advanced board with ISA slots), which UDMA seems to be broken. Despite I used 80 pin IDE cables as well for both harddisks (primary master="IBM DHEA-38451", slave="Maxtor 9 6147H8") as for the optical drives (secondary master="HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8163B", slave="PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-111D"), the PC locks up when I attempt to boot windows with UDMA enabled in the BIOS. Even when I solely enable UDMA for the secondary slave (the Pioneer DVR-111D), windows locked up and left some badly corrupted files (guts of the firefox browser) on the harddisk. In DOS mode the TDB flasher complains that it can not be run in DOS mode.

Technically UDMA Mode 4 can not be necessary for flashing anyway (a reasonable flasher should always use the safest and not fastest IDE mode!), because the original Pioneer DVR-111D flasher for firmware 1.29 (DVR111D_FW129EU.EXE) worked without problem in DOS mode, so I have now the original firmware 1.29 on my drive and can neither unflash nor crossflash it.

I also tried DVRFlash_v2.5.1.zip with the firmware files found in the TDB and Pioneer packages, but it complains that I need the kernel file for DVR-111L to crossflash, but I have no clue where to get the kernel from. The Pioneer site doesn't have the firmware 1.06 for DVR-111L anymore, and the firmware "111_106.zip" that I downloaded contains no separate firmware files at all, but only an executable "111_106.EXE". This may be some kind of SFX archive, however it could not be opened in WinZip or ZipGenie to extract firmware files the easy way.


Please tell me how I can get the "TDB Flasher" to work on Win98SE on a mainboard without UDMA, or at least tell me where I can download the naked firmware kernel file for Pioneer DVR-111L to be used with DVRFlash.

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[Ian]

I don't think there is a kernel available for the DVR-111L. Your best bet is to find a computer that supports UDMA and use it to cross flash your drive. Then you can install it back in your system.

[-CO-Windler]

I own no other PCs those are newer than this one. That this one has 2 USB1 ports is already luxury to me.

(I use this burner since 2 weeks without any problems. In runs in regular DMA mode (non-UDMA) and burns CDR in UDF mode very well. I also managed to flash an original Pioneer firmware 1.29 with their DOS executable, that also needs no UDMA rubbish. (The idea of using such a potentially troublesome IDE mode to flash appears insane. It is like doing brain surgery to a giraffe through its hoof. Flashing should always use the safest and not fastest mode.))

Is there a way to extract the kernel from the executable to bypass the TDB flasher and use it directly (e.g. with DVRFlash) or is there at least a way to extract or download a genuine DVR-111L Kernel? (Pioneer doesn't have the firmware 1.06 on their site anymore.)