the new firmware broke my damn a03!!!

[jaay]

i have an a03 and i downloaded the update from pioneer and ran the program in win2000 and it had an error in flashing and now the drive is inoperable! it seems to have no power, i cant eject the tray and the firmware now appears to be vers. 00000. please please help me out here!

[Commander XJL]

Go to this link, at the bottom there is something about a utility for reloading an older version firmware, its for an A03 drive, it might fix your burner I hope. What version firmware did you try to update to?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32614

Also try this link on a tested cd you can make to downgrade firmware http://digilander.libero.it/laptum2/

[jaay]

i tried to update from 1.65 to 1.90 that was supplied on the pioneer website. i cant get teh drive to respond to any new flashing requests so i dont know how i can try to load an old one!

[Commander XJL]

If your drives firmware is reading all zeros, this should mean its ready to accept firmware update using normal Pioneer flasher. Have you tried that?

[Commander XJL]

Read this, at the bottom there is someone who downgraded and has link to files he used to reflash his drive, check it out

http://www.mediaforums.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11309&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

[jaay]

whenever i try to flash it with any firmware ti just gets an error and cant continue. tonight i'll take a screen grab of the error msg so you can all see.
yoru help and suggestions are much appreciated, i cant afford to just replace the drive if its broken :(

[alexnoe]

The loader Commander pointed to does NOT check the old firmware!

These strange UPGDVDX.EXE is buggy. It does not work here either. The only loader which works here is dvr103.exe (DOS only!), which you can download in the FAQ.

If the drive accepts the flashing command, then it can be revived as easily as a bad-blashed liteon drive! Please try it, but before it, please calm down. You can get angry again if this loader doesn't work either :sly:

[jaay]

i'm not angry, just frustrated at pioneer - no warnings on their site about potential bad flashing, no help for it either.
you guys are my saviour, it just shouldnt be that way.

[alexnoe]

There is *always* the risk of a bad flash, for every firmware upgrade. You can go to cdfreaks and have a look how many bad flashs occur on LiteOn drives (which can fortunately be revived with 3rd party software)...

That's why e.g. Plextor has taken special means to allow bad-flash-recovery in most cases.

And believe me: The Pioneer support is not the worst one out there...

[jaay]

when i get home from work i will try flashing it from a dos boot disk using dvr103.exe and the official firmware version 1.9.
is there ny command i should be using oather than dvr103 xxx where xxx is the firmware file, any switches to try to force it etc?

[alexnoe]

Usually not.

[jaay]

using the dvr103_dos loader and a win98 dos boot disk fixed it.
thanx for all the help and suggestions.