I usually purchase my drives on-line. How can I determine if a particular brand and/or model is rebadged?
What brand drive are purchasing? Some company's use more than one manufacturer to make their drives. Ex. I bought an I/O Magic drive at staples in Feb., it is a rebadged BTC drive. Another member here bought the same brand in May and it was a rebadged BenQ. NEC, BenQ, Lite-On, LG, and Pioneer will most likely be as marked.
@LOCOENG Got that same rebadged I/O Magic from CompUsa, it is a BTC and I got the USB one which I sent back because it crashed my computer got a second one and it did the same thing. It has a crappy chipset in the enclosure. You are right on those brands, even Plextor has come out with their lower priced model which is a rebadged BenQ 1640. And Sony's are rebadged Lite-ons.
My first burner 3 years ago was a TDK 440n. I bought it because it was the only one at Fry's Electronics with a black bezel that matched my computer. I only found out it was a rebadged NEC 1300A when I was looking for firmware upgrades.
I have one of those NEC 1300a drives it was the first one I bought, still use it. It only burns at 4x but has done over 1000 burns it is a real workhorse.
At this website you can research a particular burner and the results will indicate whether it is rebadged model of another burner. http://www.videohelp.com/
@ arniebear: Do you know of any hacked firmware for that NEC 1300A that will allow for Bitsetting/Booktype changing? Leggy & Dee NEC hacks don't go back that far. That burner works as good today as it did three years ago. I haven't tried any 16X media in there, but 8X has no problem with 1.0c firmware.
@arniebear LOL...I know yours is a BTC too, you and either saugmon or car.mike, maybe both helped me with it when I first came to AD. I have since moved on to an NEC 3540A and love it. I actually had Plextor typed in and remembered that BenQ was making drives for them now. Thanks for the help again if I didn't say it the first time. LOL
You are welcome, I got nothing good to say about BTC, I try to be kind and bite my tongue, but arghhhhhhh they are cheap!!!!!!!!
Even BenQ seems to have gotten in on the rebadging thing ... The BenQ DQ60 and the Plextor PX750A are both made by Teac ...
At this time I am undecided, but want to avoid buying a "pig in the poke" as it were. I now use 2 burners--an NEC and an I/O, and am in need of a third. I'm curious enough to pull the drives, if necessary, to determine the manufacturer. Will that do it or is there an easier way. Can I do it with Nero toolkit?
Please bear with me--where am I supposed to be looking in DVD Decrypter? I see the name and model # of the drive in the source window--is that what I'm supposed to search for in rcp1.org?
Yes...also under the tools drop down menu, you can go to drive->capabilities. Or under the tools menu->druve->search for firmware.
Thanks for your patience LOCOENG. Followed your instructions and here is what I got from rpc1.org. If I'm reading this correctly, there are 3 companies that manufactured this model drive. Your search string is: _NEC ND-3500AG The results are as follows: Thu Aug 12, 2004 4:31 pm NEC ND-3500A NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AG - 2.16, 2.18, 2.19, 2.1A / 2.06 / 2.58 (Packardbell OEM) / 2.88 (fujitsu OEM) / 2.FA, 2.FD (Mad Dog OEM) Beta Region Free (RPC-1) firmware is available here. Patched by The Dangerous Brothers. RPC-2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited by: Arzeno Last update: Wed Sep 07, 2005 12:39 am Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:07 pm Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 - 2.F6, 2.F8, 2.F9, 2.FA Beta region free, (RPC-1) firmware is available here. Patched by The Dangerous Brothers. Firmware 2.F8 allows full bitsetting capabilities for both single layer and double layer DVD+R media as well as DVD+RW discs. OEM NEC ND-3500AG RPC-2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited by: dhc014 Last update: Fri Nov 12, 2004 4:25 am
Looks like you've got an NEC drive there. Now all you have to determine is what the drive says on the face et al Mad dog, Packard Bell etc. Then you just update to the newest firmware listed for that manufacturer.
