New Firmware available for Benq 4824P

[CDRecorder]

Firmware D.UC was released.

Edit: It adds support for Mt. Rainier!

[Hazey]

I just flashed my 5224P with the Kuc firmware and the unit went dead . I had the eariler Ksc firmware handy so I flashed it back and now the burner is working again . Not sure what the cause of that was. I really want the Mt.rainer support, but I'm just glad to have my burner working again . Any Ideas??

[Hazey]

Hey Lite-On Guy

Can you tell me the procedure on how you upgrade the firmware on your drive? I presume it's the same steps as mine. I just want to make sure i'm doing it the right way although i have upgraded twice before without problems. I can say that the way the BenQ site says to do it is not the way I have done it. Either there directions are wrong or i've been very lucky. I just unzip the file which gives me the K.uc.exe file. I then just click the exe and follow the directions.

P.S. anyone else feel free to jump in. I'm new at this so i won't mind being straightened out.

Thanks

[Hazey]

Solved my on problem

When I tried to upgrade from firmware Ksc to Kuc the burner would not function anymore.So I flashed back to the Ksc. I then wanted to see if had somehow ruined the burner from be able to accept any firmware updates.( thought I might have been stuck with the Ksc.). I had the older firmware Krc so I flashed back to that. It worked no problem. Not wanting to give up, i then decided to try and flash from the Krc firmware to the Kuc firmware. This time it worked . I'm not sure why i had to go that route but i'm not complaining.
Anyway to sum it up(perhaps this might help someone else in the same boat)


Ksc ----> Kuc = Dead burner
Krc ----> Kuc = Mt. Rainier

That's it. I'm done talking to myself

Cheers

[CDRecorder]

Welcome to CDRLabs, Hazey!

I'm glad to hear your drive is working again! I don't know what happened with that first flash; I flashed from D.SC to D.UC without problems. Maybe there was just an error or something.

If you saw the directions on Benq's site, I seem to recall that they are very outdated. Double-clicking on the EXE file and following the directions is how I updated mine, too.

BTW, what symptoms did you see when your drive went dead after the flash to K.UC?

Also, do you hear a slight "grinding" sound when your drive searches for a disc, such as when you close the tray without a disc in it?

[Hazey]

Thanks for responding LiteOnGuy

[qoute] what symptoms did you see when your drive went dead after the flash to K.UC? [/quote]

When I started the upgrade(K.SC -> K.UC) The message came up saying it was matching the ckeck sum(or somthing to that effect). The light on my drive lit up red.Then a message came up saying waiting for drive to respond. At that point the red light went out. Moments later the complete message popped up. It was after this point that my drive would not respond. I couldn't eject(either through using the button or by a comand through a program). Funny thing, info tool said I had the right firmware installed and had the MT.Rainier box checked. Couldn't use the drive at all

do you hear a slight "grinding" sound when your drive searches for a disc, such as when you close the tray without a disc in it?

I can hear a slight noise(not sure if it's a grinding noise)but i don't think it's any different then before. Besides, from the bad reviews i have read about BenQ, as far as quality goes, i'm surprised it's not sqreeching and smoking .

I just got a couple questions about Mt.Rainier.

1. Is there supposed to be some kind of message or graph telling you how far along the format process is going? ie. when it finishes?

2. I'm assuming that you can start writing to the disk soon after the formatting starts. Is it normal for transfers of files to go real slow during this process? i.e 10meg file taking almost 10mins to transfer over.

3. Is there a way to ajust the burning speed while using packet writing software like incd? or does it just pick a speed automaticly? The reason I ask that is bacause even after the formatting is done my transfers are still really slow. 400megs of files took 45mins to complete using verbatim 12x cdrw. I had faster speeds before without Mt.Rainier formatting(even including the 20min format time).

Thanks for your time.

Cheers.

[KCK]

Hazey:

I presume you were using InCD 3.52.40.

A1: There is no progress indicator or message when background formatting finishes. It's done via the burner's firmware. On some burners, its end can be detected by watching the LEDs (usually there are short bursts of writing activity at the end). On Lite-On burners, it takes about 9 min for 10x discs. You can check if it has finished via Nero | Recorder | Medium-Info (you may need to eject the disc before calling Nero).

A2: For many burners tested within the last six months, the effective writing speed depends very weakly or not at all on whether background formatting has finished. For others, significant slowdowns occur.

A3: All recent versions of InCD 3.x pick the burning speed automatically. Transferring 400 MB in 45 min corresponds to 1x. This is really bad, since I guess that for the same Verbatim 12x media you get much higher transfer rates for the standard UDF 1.50 formatting.

Your slowdowns could be due to poor quality of the new firmware. On the other hand, I'm also experiencing strange slowdowns with the latest InCD 4.0.1.0; see

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=11058