finally got to install my new drive: LG GSA-H10L

[dodecahedron]

after a very intensive 2.5 weeks, i handed in my M.Sc. thesis yesterday.
so at last i have some time.
just installed the new LG drive
in the next few days i'll play a bit with it, do some media testing and will post the results. maybe even a "mini-review".

[dodecahedron]

OK this is what i got to do with it so far:

[bill]

Congrats on your thesis ! That's a lot of hard work, hope you find time for a break.

My GSA-H10A takes a long time to spin up and read a ram disk. How about your drive?

[dodecahedron]

no RAM media yet so i can't say.

i got it from my father in law who was on a business trip to Hong Kong. i asked him to get the drive only if he can buy 12x DVD-RAM with it. of course he couldn't but in the end got me the drive too. we were on the phone as he was in the store, i had him replace the H10N with H10L LOL

i hope i hadn't made a mistake here. i'm somewhat disappointed with the media scans i'm getting out of this drive, when i'm comparing with what i see at cdreaks. not as good as scans i see of other people, most of which are H10N.
but i'm rather new at this so i can't tell why.
maybe my drive isn't as good as some other drives.
maybe because i use a different drive for scanning (BenQ DW1620), most scans at cdreaks ,and here too, are on Lite On drives or newer BenQs.
maybe my computer hardware isn't up to par? AMD Athlon XP 2000+ ...
maybe it's just that my only TY media, 2 spindles of TDK 8x which were sent me from the US, aren't very good, bad batch perhaps? results of this media on my BenQ weren't stellar either.
maybe because it's warm here, in particular my computer is in a not-too-well-ventilated spot.

oh well
i'll start posting the scan results i've already made and post more as i make them.

[dodecahedron]

BTW why didn't you crossflash you drive to H10N using TDB's JJ11 firmware ?
by all accounts you get a drive that is just like a "true" H10N.

[Ian]

I wish they'd make a flasher with the JL11 firmware. The JJ is the old Japanese OEM firmware. If they did the JL11, you could use future LG updates.

[bill]

BTW why didn't you crossflash you drive to H10N using TDB's JJ11 firmware ?
by all accounts you get a drive that is just like a "true" H10N.

My H10A hasn't been used much except for RAM media. It was only yesterday that it was used to write some MKM 001. After testing the play back on a set top unit and scanning some other media with the factory firmware I'll go ahead and try the cross flash to the H10N. Just trying to get a before and after flash comparison.

Looking forward to seeing your scans when you get a chance to post them. Hopefully your scans will improve to your satisfaction after you flash to the LL11 ( TY 8X update ) firmware, assuming that you will flash at some point?

What's the MID for your TY? I have a 1620 available, a 1655 and maybe a 1640 . Would you be interested in the scan results on the same disk with the different drives?

[dodecahedron]

I wish they'd make a flasher with the JL11 firmware. The JJ is the old Japanese OEM firmware. If they did the JL11, you could use future LG updates.

???
they did. like a day or two after JL11 was released.
http://tdb.rpc1.org/#GSAH10N

JJ11 is the firmware for the Hitachi-OEM H10N's (IO Data, Buffalo). i don't think it's old. it has some advantages over the 'regular' LG firmwares (auto bitsetting, UDMA4).
although the JL11 is newer i wonder how much different it is from the JJ11, in terms of media support (not the othe stuff which is different). i suspect not much different, but as of now there's no concrete info.
besides, with TDB making patched versions of the official LG firmwares so quickly (1-2 days!) why worry? as soon as there's a new LG firmware TDB will patch it up and then you can flash it over other non-LG firmware such as JJ11.

[dodecahedron]

My H10A hasn't been used much except for RAM media. It was only yesterday that it was used to write some MKM 001. After testing the play back on a set top unit and scanning some other media with the factory firmware I'll go ahead and try the cross flash to the H10N. Just trying to get a before and after flash comparison.

what kind of RAM media? speed, brand, MID, country produced ? where did you buy it ?

Looking forward to seeing your scans when you get a chance to post them. Hopefully your scans will improve to your satisfaction after you flash to the LL11 ( TY 8X update ) firmware, assuming that you will flash at some point?

alas, the drive was flashed to LL11 before anything was burned.
i'll post the scans soon, you can see a few here:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=182304 (page 3)
if you look at other scans in that topic, and also in this topic:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=179029 (these are of the H10N but it's supposed to be the same drive minus LightScribe), i'm really disappointed. was hoping to get really good quality burns, but the YUDEN000T02 and MCC004 scans i made and posted there are nowhere as good as most scans posted by other people. all of these other posts by other people - some excellent results, mine are mediocre at best.

i'm having either bad luck with drives, with media or maybe there's some systemic problem i'm not aware of - power supply or warm (hot) computer (not well enough ventilated) - could that cause the bad results ?

What's the MID for your TY? I have a 1620 available, a 1655 and maybe a 1640 . Would you be interested in the scan results on the same disk with the different drives?

YUDEN000T02, TDK brand.
if you read that cdfreaks thread you'll see scans of this on both my BenQ DW1620 and the H10L. another guy there said the media is surprisingly bad...
what brand is your TY?
why don't you burn it on the BenQ DW1620 as well as you H10A, and scan on the 1620, we'll compare with my results.

[bill]

I did find one spindle of Fujifilms Yuden000T02, no TDK. I need to move some hardware around but I should be able to get everything done sometime on Sunday. Been wanting to get this done for a long time so it will be nice to get it accomplished and off the to do list.. With any luck I'll get a 1620, 1655, Plextor 716-SA and a Lite-on in the same case for testing purposes. Haven't done much scanning in the past so if anyone has any tips I would appreciate the help.

The RAM media on hand are 2 to 3x Verbatim and Fujifilm made in Japan stock. Also some Panasonic 2 to 3x that's labeled as made in the USA??? Could that be correct? I sent a e-mail off to Panasonic but its always hard to tell if the person answering is really that knowledgeable...

FWIW, the Verbatim MKM-001 that was burned with the H10A (JL03 firmware) played perfect in a somewhat picky Sony set top player.

When the scans are done I'll post in the DVD Writer forum.

[dodecahedron]

what speed did you burn that MKM001 DL?
i have a spindle of 10, and was thinking: test 1 disc at each speed 2.4x, 4x, 8x, one in each drive BenQ, LG, that's 6 just for testing
i think i'll pass.

i think Panasonic DVD-RAM really are made in the US, seem to recall that. search the threads for discussion on DVD-RAM. maybe dolph knows.

[bill]

that's 6 just for testing
i think i'll pass.

LOL, my thoughts exactly!

The Verbatim was written at 2.4x, trying all test burns at the rated speed first.

[bill]

Here you go, Dodec. Sorry about the delay, had some hardware issues.

The same disk ( written @ 8x ) was scanned in all three drives.

H10A scans- http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=21475


Hope it isn't a problem to post the scans here, this one time..

[[buck]]

http://www.corporatemedianews.com/artic ... p?id=28710

[dodecahedron]

yup!
thanks, [buck]

[bill]

Thanks Buck and Dodec.

I looked up the phone number for the Panasonic plant and gave them a call. I asked if they're going to make some faster -RAM and sell it in North America. The rep said; they are working on 16x in the lab but it would be a year before we see the media and that's assuming it gets produced after testing.

This is starting to get disappointing. -RAM would've been a big seller in the large markets if the manufactures had pushed development faster. What we have now are two new formats on the horizon ( which will win? ) and the current +&-R media which has questionable longevity.

[dodecahedron]

i can't imagine that it's all that much of a big difference between 12x and 16x DVD-RAM.
don't forget that any speed improvement is halved because of the verification.

bill, you should flash your H10A to H10N

[Ian]

DVD-RAM has a fairly large market share in Europe and Japan. Here in the US, we want whatever is fast and cheap, two things DVD-RAM is not. Thanks to Super-Multi drives, it is slowly catching on. However, manufacturers have been slow to ship media to major retailers.

[bill]

Yeah, I agree with what you guys are saying. A better choice of words on my part would have been- if the manufactures had pushed development and distribution more urgently. If that had happened I think it could be assumed that more media manufactures would have been involved helping to drive down the cost.

After investing all that money in developing the -RAM format it looks like it will probably wither away because of newer technologies. IMO it's a perfect format for people who know nothing about testing media or media quality and who just want to drag and drop their data to a backup disk.

Maybe there are other cost factors that I'm not thinking of..?

[Ian]

I thought that DVD recorders and camcorders with DVD-RAM support would help the format. Unfortunately, these are hard to find in the US. Most of the DVD based camcorders I see now support DVD-R or DVD-RW instead.

[bill]

Good point.

Maybe its just a case of people, at least in the US, of using what's familiar. -RAM was slow out of the gate here, never caught up.