I have a _NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A with Firmware 10FD. I presume that it is Dell OEM. I have been having problems with it for awhile but just recently started to try and figure things out. One of the problems is that it does not recognize certain media particularly CD-RW and playstation disks. I have been reading the posts in this forum about it but i am still a little confused. From what i can tell it may need a firmware upgrade. I found the firmware upgrades at http://etna.rpc1.org/nec/index.html but i am unsure which to use eg. 10GE 5 (1.32) 10GE 7 (1.32) 1iGE 5 (1.32) 1iGE 7 (1.32) 1eGE 5 (1.32) 1eGE 7 (1.32) I was also looking at the bin flash program at http://www.herrie.org/utilflash.html but i would like some more info if this is what i should be doing.
I used the 1.0c RPC1 firmware from http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com (it's thje 1.0c on the far right download link). These guys specialize in NEC firmwares. This should upgrade the drive to a ND-1300, so it'll have DVD-R write capability as well. However, it's still a pretty old drive, and I don't know if it supports all 16x media.
Would that be as stable as just upgrading to one specifically for the 1100A? I thought i read somewhere that it has some bugs doing that. Some more help in the matter would really be appreciated.
It seems stable. I'm sure it's at least as stable as any of the Herrie firmwares. Again, whether it'll recognize the newest media is anybody's guess. I have not thrown any 16x stuff at my 1100/1300. But if you're uncomfortable using a hacked firmware, you can get the latest from NEC themselves here: http://support.necam.com/Optical/