[b]Best Buy Norcent Drive won't burn [/b]

[RoMghost]

Ok guys. Anyone know whats going on with this POS Norcent 48x12x48.

I've got 9 coasters and counting. I've tried using EZCD 5 Platinum and Nero (latest versions) and tried burning from an image and direct from disk as low as 8x. I tried higher speeds but had buffer underruns. For a drive that is supposed to burn at 48x Nero says its top speed is 20x

I tried two different brands of media, TDK and generic unknown. Both EZCD and Nero says the disks are burned ok but when I try to read them they can't be read (even with UDF).

I've been using scsi cd and cd-r Plextor drives, the cd-r is a 4x (slow) but rock solid. I'm thinking about going back to them if this Norcent won't work. I guess you get what you pay for, $9 doesn't buy much.

[dhc014]

Flash your drive with VS08 from www.liteonit.com if your drive is named a LTR-48125W is device manager. If it is named something else you may have to flash it with mtkflash. Is your drive the LTR-48125W model?

[BillyG]

I was at my local best buy and they had a few extra of those Norcent drives - I would try getting another one.

The one I got was an benq/acer drive. Does anyone know what model this is and can it be flashed to an benq/acer bios??

[RoMghost]

The device manager says:

"ATAPI CD-R/RW 48/12"

I'm running XP Pro (sp1) and it installed the OS drivers for it.

It looks exactly like the RW320 listed on the USA Norcent.com site, but it could just use the same face plate.

I'll try to attach an image

[cfitz]

It's the Benq. They have a bad reputation in my book - cheaply made and poorly performing.

So, you can't upgrade the firmware as dhc014 was hoping you might be able to.

Me personally, I would take it back and get my $9 returned. That is what I did when I found a Benq instead of LiteOn in a "bargain" CD-RW box I paid $19 several months ago. I tried to keep an open mind and give it a chance, but like you, I got nothing but bad results from it. Some things just aren't worth it, no matter how inexpensive.

cfitz

[hoxlund]

yeah, those norcents are wonderful if you got a lite-on drive inside

[KuoH]

You sure about that? When I had the DR/BenQ4812P, it did ok with most media. Mine originally had A.KZ firmware, but by A.RZ, it was doing 48x on some CMC media and 32x-40x on most other. I only had one stubborn brand that was stuck at 16x and they weren't CMCs.

KuoH

It's the Benq. They have a bad reputation in my book - cheaply made and poorly performing.

So, you can't upgrade the firmware as dhc014 was hoping you might be able to.

[cfitz]

Well I'm sure about my opinion. It is based on two Acer/Benq drives I have dealt with - one at work and the $19 one I described above. Both gave me problems. I did upgrade to the latest (at the time) firmware for the $19 drive I purchased for my own use, but it still gave bad results. I haven't had any trouble with Yamaha, Memorex and LiteOn drives.

I suspect, though, that what you mean is "Am I sure that the Benq firmware can't be updated in general?" It can't be updated with the VS08 LiteOn firmware that dhc014 mentioned. That I am sure of. The Benq uses a different chipset. There may, however, be a firmware update available from Benq that might be usable and potentially could improve the situation a little:

http://www.benq.com/drivers/storage_drivers.html

cfitz

[RoMghost]

Yep, looks to be a BenQ. Odd that it only has one button on the face instead of two that I see on every BenQ unit. Went to the BenQ site and they did not have a firmware for the 48/12x drive but did for the 48/16x drive. Think I'll give it a shot. At this point its useless anyway if it doesn't burn anything.

[RoMghost]

Well, the BenQ firmware doesn't work. I decided to pull it apart to see if any brand names show up on the PCB. No Mfg. on the PCB but it has a lot of Philips IC's and one Pioneer IC on it. The largest chip, which is obviously the core processor, is a Phillips. One note of interest is that when I pulled it apart, there right where a second "play/skip" button would be on a BenQ is the mini contact switch on the PCB. I hooked the unit up and put in a music CD and let it spin up, pressed the "play/skip" button and low and behold it played! They left the programming support for the play/skip feature in the CD-RW unit and deleted the button off the faceplate, go figure

At least it’s a $9 CD-ROM for a cheapo system if it can't be used as a burner.

Anyway, thought I'd add to the knowledge base for those that didn't know this.

[RoMghost]

OK guys, thought you might want to know this (for those that had the same Norcent drive). It was a bad drive!!! I went to BB and picked up another drive, same one but with a newer Bios installed. The bad drive had Bios 7.BE and the new one was 7.GE. I don't know if the Bios fixed it or the drive hardware was bad but this one seems to work fine. I burned three disks just fine, so far. The buffer even ran out causing the drive to halt the burn process intermittently and the disks still turned out ok.

nuff' said......

[hoxlund]

did you run cd speed on the disk to see if its ok, ill bet you that theres tons of errors on it

get cd speed here:

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=download.html

[RoMghost]

I have nero 5.xx so I already have cdspeed. I was messing around with it but how would I use it for what you describe. Can it check for errors or quality of the copy? It's fairly vague in explaining what each test does and how to use it.

[hoxlund]

yeah put in a cd, then start cd speed, then click on extra up top then scandisc, then in the new dialog window, click on surface scan, then start

then theres also the cd quality test in the extra menu too

[RoMghost]

So if there are errors that come up, what does that mean? Is the disk bad or extra space used up?

[hoxlund]

if the cd is fully usable, it means nothing, but its just nice to know, there are no errors being burnt