New hardware revision for LiteOn 52327S

[rdgrimes]

Just a word of caution for anyone who has bought a new 52327S since December, or is buying one now/soon.
There is a new hardware revision that does not use EEPROM. This is of particular significance if you try to flash firmware with anything other than the official LiteOn flasher, and also if you accidentally flash it with any of the EEPROM mods that are around for the DVD burners.
Read about it at CDFreaks.
Very little is known about the new firmware at this point. Any volunteers willing to sacrifice a 52327S in the name of testing should contact DHC014.

[Ian]

Interesting.. makes you wonder if they're doing this to prevent overclocking. What you'd overclock that drive to is beyond me.

[rdgrimes]

No, it's cost saving....less flash memory. Of course it will force us to re create all the firmware flashing tools, but only a temporary setback.

[eliminator]

interesting...

[RJW]

Interesting.. makes you wonder if they're doing this to prevent overclocking. What you'd overclock that drive to is beyond me.[q/uote]

No, it's cost saving....less flash memory. Of course it will force us to re create all the firmware flashing tools, but only a temporary setback.

Don't you think it's a 2 in one.

Cost safeing and pushing the modification and overclocking community a step back. Since Lite On is still increasing there defences against this.
What's better then safeing money and also makeing your product a bit better protected.

[rdgrimes]

Interesting.. makes you wonder if they're doing this to prevent overclocking. What you'd overclock that drive to is beyond me.[q/uote]

No, it's cost saving....less flash memory. Of course it will force us to re create all the firmware flashing tools, but only a temporary setback.

Don't you think it's a 2 in one.

Cost safeing and pushing the modification and overclocking community a step back. Since Lite On is still increasing there defences against this.
What's better then safeing money and also makeing your product a bit better protected.

Just curious, what "overclocking and modding" would apply to the 52327S burner?

[dolphinius_rex]

hrm... moddable to a DVD burner? (j/K)

[Ian]

Well, this hardware design is used by a number of OEM's. Doing this might prevent you from turning say a Sony into a Lite-On.

[RJW]

No that's not it.
If Lite On wants to use this also for DVD burners they would have a lot of extra work. So why not do it easily and see if you can get it to work on a much easier cd-writer and safe allready some costs.
I think the main idea was cost safeing as Rdgrimes allready said.

However it's still a nice extra that it might solve some other problems which Lite On has(OC/Modding is losing income !)

So it's mostly A still if the cd-writer is a succes we might see it more developped returning for DVD writers. Which means problem of OC/modding is solved for a couple of weeks that is.
With new dual drive technology this just might be a nice extra if the rest is allmost the same as the good old 811S/812S. We all know that these drives do have the power to burn this disc's it's just a matter if the rest of the drive optics can. However some people will try to make it a dual drive as soon as lite On releases a dual drive. Any extra form of protection would be welcome. Specially if it allready saved money in the first place!

[dhc014]

This has nothing to do with preventing overclocking or converting at all. As was said before, this is purely a cost reducing move. All that was removed was a physical chip, the concept is still there, and the same old tools still work.

[rdgrimes]

I also reject the notion that all the modding costs LiteOn money, and I really doubt that they think so either. Except for returned killed drives, it is surely increasing their sales. They make the same profit from drive x as they do from drive y. It surely increases repeat business too, all of which they will have thoroughtly calculated. In fact, if it wasn't for the availability of the mods, all those old 401S drive would never have been sold. They could easily stop all modding if they really wanted to. Just my 2 cents.

[dolphinius_rex]

I also reject the notion that all the modding costs LiteOn money, and I really doubt that they think so either. Except for returned killed drives, it is surely increasing their sales. They make the same profit from drive x as they do from drive y. It surely increases repeat business too, all of which they will have thoroughtly calculated. In fact, if it wasn't for the availability of the mods, all those old 401S drive would never have been sold. They could easily stop all modding if they really wanted to. Just my 2 cents.

I agree!

[Ian]

I really can't imagine that they're saving much money here....

[rdgrimes]

Well they're getting some stiff competition now, every nickel saved is a nickel profit, and when you figure 40 million drives in a year.......$2 million saved .

[dolphinius_rex]

you'd be amazed at how many deals can be made or lost over a single penny... even a Canadian penny! especially when talking very large quantities.