As the title says I have a oem/bulk BenQ 1620 Pro. Are there any advantages to crossflashing this drive? What are they? If I do crossflash can someone please tell me were I can get all the software I will need? Thanks
Urm so which drive do you have a 1650 or a 1655? lol As for cross flashing, it works if the drives use the same chipset. All you do is flash it with the other drives firmware and then the drive recognises it as the new drive, making it able to say read DL if the old one couldn't etc. There are risks that come with cross flashing, as a bad flash can result in a dead drive... However, it can be done sucessfully and I can help you out, just need to know what drive you rly have lol
You would do so in order to 1. enable bitsetting and/or 2. to enable some feature and/or 3. to disable Riplock. About the only thing the Benq doesn't do out of the box is bitset single-layer DVD+Rs (it does DL +Rs I think), but I think there is a Benq utility either at the site or in Nero that will allow you to set it to bitset +Rs, so there is no real point in crossflashing.
Okay first off my bad everybody I was looking online at some stores trying to find a site that has retail BenQ DW1655's for sale. The drive I actually have is a bulk (so theres no BenQ on the drive cover)BenQ DW1620 Pro. In my pc it is recognized as a ATAPI 2X16X4 or something like that and I would like it to be recognized as a genuine BenQ and be able to take advantage of anything that might result of the crossflashing. I have the latest firmware for both the retail and oem version of my drive.
I have an OEM BenQ 1650. It shows up in Device Manager as a BenQ drive, and I did no cross flashing. I use the BenQ firmware. I use BenQ Qsuite, and it has all the functionality of my BenQ 1655, except for the LightScribe burning.
Let me restate myself to clear up any confusion I may have caused. I originally posted regarding a BenQ DW1655 DVD drive, that was a mistake I have a bulk/oem BenQ 1620 Pro. Again I do not have a DW1655 I have a 1620 Pro. I would like to how I can crossflash my drive to read as a genuine BenQ drive and If I chose to go that path what pro's/con's there is. *note I changed my first post to reflect the actual drive I own.
Go to www.videohelp.com, click on "DVD Writers" on the left, and punch in Benq into the top search field. Also check the box next to DVD+R DL to narrow your search results to modern Benq drives and you will see the 1620, 1650, and a few others, as well as get reviews. If all you want is for it to say "Benq" in DVDIdentifier or such, go to Benq's site and look for a firmware for your drive. Alternatively, search rpc1.org for one. If your intent is to try to crossflash in order to convert your 1620 Pro into a 1650, then it may or may not work. Check Rpc1.prg, cdfreaks.com, or search around here to see if anyone has done it successfully. The primary risk with flashing any device is that you may ruin it, especially if the flash goes awry. If the power goes out or internal I/O ports aren't the same as the firmware expects, then your drive will hang and most likely will not be able to accept a reflash to its original status, meaning the drive is done. Crossflashing is best done with drives of the same era (e.g. you might be able to crossflash a 1650 to a 1655, or an NEC 3550a to a NEC 4550 which supports DVD-RAM, etc.) But the 1620 and 1650 are really different drives and while there are drives that can be upgraded from, say, no DL capability to DL capability, or from no DVD-R support to supporting some level of DVD-R, unless you know of someone who has done it successfully, then you will be the guinea pig. If you proceed, let us know how it went.
I found this on the Videohelp website whilst I was looking around for ya. So..doesn't look as if he had much sucess, but he doesn't state what firmware he used or under what conditions etc etc. And for all we know he might be a complete novice to cross flashing drives... EDIT: You can flash the OEM version of your drive to the retail version...making it a "real" BenQ drive...Links... [bold]Can it be done...[/bold] http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=138436#fw-cf_oem [bold]How to do it...[/bold] http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=120252 [bold]Info...[/bold] http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=138436#gen-pro [bold]Firmwares...[/bold] http://tdb.rpc1.org/#DW1620 - G firmware = OEM and B firmware = Retail. Is this what you were after doing?
Okay thanks a bunch everybody, I successfully crossflashed my I/O Magic Drive to read as a genuine BenQ 1620 Pro. I used BQFlasher and the retail B7W9 firmware. One cdfreaks.com link listed by Ripper stated that the original 1620 Pro firmware (B7T9) is superior to the rest. Is there any real truth behind a statement like this? Or will going with the latest firmware (B7W9) really be a difference? Thanks for all the help so far.
I don't know specifically about that so I'll let someone else reply, but it is plausible for "newer" firmwares to be worse than older ones. This is extremely common in the software world in general (e.g. Nero, Windows, Kerio firewall, Norton's, etc.) where newer products are frequently undertested, overdeveloped/bloated, insecure or just plain buggy.
Hi, I'm glad you sucessfully flashed it and glad i could help. As for the firmware, I also don't know specificly which is better but if cdfreaks suggests that that firmware is better then just go with that, as i dont think it will make much difference as long as you are using high quality common media, eg verbatim or taiyo yuden, which I trust you are ;-) And if you get any disk read error etc with that firmware you can allways upgrade to the latest one.
Thanks for the help everyone. I dont think I should have any problems. I had great help here and only burn with quality media so all should be good. Again thanks for the help. - Pea.
