Getting down to work

    Fixed up the drive as a secondary master (Pentium 4 1.6A on a MSI 645Ultra board with 256mb PC2100 DDR SDRAM running on Win98SE), installed Nero 5.5.8.2 and got down to backing up some data. It is fast even at 32X (maybe I am just used to my Actima 4X). In the following page, I have attached some screenshots showing the recording strategies, flashing of firmware and Nero Recorder Info.

I want 48X NOW!

    Overclocking the drive is essentially the same as flashing any other firmware for your vid-card or BIOS for your motherboard. Boot into DOS mode. Run the application and follow the instructions on-screen.  This is what you should see.

Flashing to firmware ver. VS02

    The flashing process takes approx. 2-3 minutes. After rebooting, Windows detected the 'new' drive, LTR-48125W. I use Nero to check if it can recognized the 'new' drive as well. Screenshots as shown below. Basically the only difference from 32X (WBS4) to 48X (VS02) is the addition of Mt. Rainier support and of course the increased speed! Between firmware ver. VS02 and VS06 (official firmware), we can see a minor correction for the buffer size from 1984kb to 2048kb.

Note: All testing to be performed on firmware VS06.

Further testing

   Using CD Speed again, we tested the drive for the updated recording strategy with a blank Ridata 40X CD-R. This is what we have ...and VS06 is a touch faster. If you look at the chart carefully, the drive went above 48X in the last 5 minutes! Hmmmm ... if this is the case, the media used must be rated at 50X at the very least.

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