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Saturday, March 1. 2008
Dell firmware problems with TSSTCorp TS-L632D DVD drive
If you own a Dell notebook with a TS-L632D CD/DVD drive and use it with Ubuntu Linux then you may have the same problem as me: You can't select the write speed in Nautilus. After hours of research I puzzled together various information I found on the net and now I got it working.
The problem is the Dell firmware. And the solution is to install the Samsung firmware. Unfortunately you need Windows for it...
First of all you must download the latest Dell firmware update for the drive (Currently this is DE04) because it contains the firmware flash tool you will need for flashing the Samsung firmware. Then you must download the latest Samsung firmware. The current SC04 firmware can be found here. But maybe you can find a newer one on the net.
Now unpack the downloaded Dell firmware update and you should end up with a *.BIN file (which you don't need) and a executable with a filename like SFDNWIN3.27.11.exe. Open a command-line, go to the directory which contains the executable and then start it with the command-line argument -NOCHECK. This parameter must be upper-case! Now select the Samsung firmware you have downloaded and then write it to the drive. Ignore the Version too old warning which may appear.
When you now reboot into your Linux then you can choose the write speed without any problems. Another interesting phenomena is that suddenly the drive is recognized as DVD-RAM capable:
cdrecord -prcap with DE04 firmware:
... Does not read DVD-RAM media Does not write DVD-RAM media ...
cdrecord -prcap with SC04 firmware:
... Does read DVD-RAM media Does write DVD-RAM media ...
Even Windows makes a difference now. With the DE04 firmware the drive was listed as DVD-RW drive. With the SC04 firmware it is now listed as DVD-RAM drive. Haven't tested if it really reads and writes DVD-RAM media but others reported that it works.
Unfortunately, I'm not running Ubuntu or any form of Linux on my Dell Inspiron 6400...yet; I'm still suffering Windows XP. However, I 'Upgraded' to DE04 and all audio and video playback from the optical drive became choppy and stuttered. Then I ran this sleek hack and now everything works again.
Thank you,
Jack
2. Download the DE04-2.zip file.
3. Unzip this ZIP-File to your desktop (After this you should have a DE04.BIN and a SFDNWIN3.27.11.exe on your Desktop)
4. Open a command line (Pressing Windows-R, typing "cmd", pressing Enter)
5. Go to the "Desktop" folder (By typing "cd Desktop")
6. Start the EXE file with the -NOCHECK parameter by typing "SFDNWIN3.27.11 -NOCHECK" (NOCHECK MUST BE UPPER CASE!). An alert is displayed saying that Nocheck mode is enabled. Confirm it with OK.
7. In the next strange window first make sure the correct drive is selected (if you have multiple CD ROM drives).
8. Click the button in the upper-left corner and then select the TS-L632D_SC04.bin file.
8. Click the next button (The one with the green chip and the white arrow). It should now flash the new firmware into the drive.
I hope that was detailed enough.
I've used to command line to open the executive file. After many researches, this seems to be the right thing to do. However, SFDNWIN wouldn't accept the SC04.bin file. It says : "This firmware is not compatible with the selected drive."
Any ideas ??
Pierre
I just tried this today (4/17/2009) and it worked for me the first try. Thank you so much to Klaus Reimer for sharing this.
I haven't had a problem with playing / burning CDs but when I tried to play my store bought, offical DVDs, they were terribly choppy. This update worked for me. Dell should update the drivers on the support site.
For reference, I have a Dell Latitude D820 with Win XP with the TSST L632D.
Tracked: Jun 03, 09:25