The Firmware Page

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 fix the "TDB Flasher" to run 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.

there is no kernel available for the 111L, Pioneer will not have the firmware, as its not from them, but oem buffalo, maybe you can try hooking up the drive in an external enclosure, or flash in another pc, TDB's flasher/kernel works on mosy system's, you unfortunate that it doesn't with yours, but the chances are slim to zero it will ever be looked at

I own no other PCs those are newer than this one. That this one has 2 USB1 ports is already luxury to me. Is there a way to extract the kernel from the executable to bypass the TDB flasher and use it directly (e.g. with DVRFlash)?

there is currently no available utility that will extract it from TDB's exe flasher/kernel

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.)

pioneer wouldn't have this anyway, its an oem firmware. there hasn't been a 111L kernel released, so unfortunately your out of luck

You cannot use nor really flash this UDMA4 burner then, that is clear.
The only choice is to use an add-on PATA card which supports optical drives, eg. such with ITE chipsets.

Also, this is wrong:

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.)




Other programs (e.g. Nero) support UDF only on CD-RW, not regular CDR, because deleting and overwriting on CDR transforms the directory into a tapeworm that turns very slow during access. Modern programs omitted this mode because its slow and jerky behaviour feels not elegant enough. (I delete very little, so I prefer CDR because they are less prone to spontaneous decomposition.) The reason why WinOnCD 3.7 supports it is because it is so old that during its creation CD-RW media and drives were still an uncommon technology.

please refrain from using insulting language, it's not accept here

Sorry CO_windler, i chose the wrong "smiley".
It was not meant here and nor to you...

DMA4 or not were discussed in extension before, really.
Flashing in non DMA4 mode, as you found out yourself, results in a chaos. Luckily the drive has some kind of failsafe mode to prevent further damage.
So, the drive will work slowly for burning but any time you try to flash it and it runs not in UDMA4 mode, the issue will be the same as before.
That are the things i had to find out by myself trying to operate and flash my 111 a while ago, even using an old copmuter like you posted in post#1.

111L kernel and firmware files, use DVRFlash and the -ff command to crossflash

http://sony0.rpc1.org/111L_kernel_firmware.zip

hope this helps

Thanks! I will try it.

I hope it helps and won't toast my PC...

no it won't, there is two version's you can try, windows and dos, check the DVRFlash thread if your unsure for a command line

I have successfully crossflashed my 111D to 111L now with this file:
http://sony0.rpc1.org/111L_kernel_firmware.zip

However it is only version 8.19 instead of 8.29, and the kernel seems to be from the external version of the drive, which has different IDE timing or whatever, and I can not upgrade to 8.29 with the TDB firmware files I have for the internal drive. I will check on the TDB site if I find the external 8.29 version.

I am not sure if this makes any difference in a slow PC anyway, but do you have the kernel for the internal version?

By the way, the 111L_kernel_firmware.zip locks up my windows explorer as soon I attempt to rightclick on it. Is there a virus in it or something corrupt? When I doubleclicked it to open it with ZipGenius, the contents looks normal, and also Kaspersky AntiVirus did not complain about the files inside.

makes no difference with it being external, i will update the zip file with the 8.29 firmware, the kernel stays the same, as it doen't make a difference, do you think a moderator of this forum, would upload a virus to members? the files are 100% clean

update

zip file has been update with 8.29 firmware

I now downloaded the external firmware 8.29 from the TDB site and successfully flashed it with DVRFlash. Do you have the kernel of the internal version?

The zip archive you uploaded seems to be indeed corrupt. After download with Firefox 2.0.0.14 I could easily open it with ZipGenie to extract its contents, and also the "check zip integrity"(?) function showed no problems. But as soon I attempt to rightclick or drag it in any way with windows explorer, the explorer locks up and can be only terminated by raw force using ctrl-alt-del. It is not the contents, but apparently the file name contains some invisible illegal characters or the like, because after extracting the files and re-zipping it to a zip archive of the same name, the new zip archive works without any problems. However the original zip archive could not even be deleted with Win98SE means, so I had to open a dos box to del it, which again crashed the (still open) explorer. Did you create the zip archive with Linux or Mac in an unusual char set? It is definitely defective in an unusual way.

Try with 7zip. If windoze exploder wrecks up again, try with diropus or from the commandline to extract the archieve.

works fine on XP and Vista here

I did not unzip the archive when it crashed. I only rightclicked to open the context menu (from where I normally can start the unzip process or virus scan or copy it elsewhere) and already this completely locked up the explorer. Also attempts to copy or move it by ctrl-c or ctrl-x locked it up, thus I later deleted the dangerous archive. For unzipping I doubleclicked it, which opens ZipGenie (an old program by DataBecker). It could extract the contents without problem and also move it into a new archive of the same name, which I then used instead. It also did verify that it was not a damaged zip archive.

So far it was no virus, I guess that either the file name or file attributes must include something terrible (eg. ASCII character 0 ???) that makes win98se bite the dust. (I could not even scan it with Kaspersky AntiVirus, because any attempt of rightclicking it to start the scan locked up the explorer.)

Your antivirus scanner went mad, I think.

Again, I did not scan for a virus. I even most times turn the damned thing off, because it slows down the PC to 1/3 of its regular speed and e.g. makes it impossible to watch downloaded YouTube clips on MediaPlayer Classic. (Of course I scan them once after download, but I avoid keeping Kaspersky active in the background so long I am offline. E.g. copying photos from the digicam and renaming them takes about 20 times as long with active virus scanner.)

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, I just thought I'd point out that the DVR-111L 8.19 (int) firmware flags up on several antivirus programs. Norman picks it up as Zlob, AVG reckons it's a Win32/Heur and several others on www.virustotal.com complain about it as well.

Same goes for the DVR-111L 8.19 (ext) firmware. Of 43 scanners on VirusTotal, 10 flag the file.

And, who cares??
This is binary kernel firmware and closest to known routines, dont believe all the crap on the net.