HP8250i (Philips CDD4201) bit the dust?!?!

[Stiletto]

After recently learning that my dad's Hewlett-Packard 8250i was merely
a Philips CDD4201 in disguise, I set out to get the latest firmware
update for my father's CD-RW drive. I HAD version 1.04 as of then, so
I surfed the web and found Philip's latest Flash tool. Impressed that
it could even flash it in Windows (most firmware and BIOS updaters
I've seen have been DOS programs), I decided to give it a shot.
Making sure that DMA was disabled first, I started flashtool -
beginning with H2_U108.cvt, as the directions said. First, both
drives ejected their CDs (the CDRW was empty to begin with) - normal
behavior, and then the message came up to say that it was finished
flashing.

Well, "finished" is definitely the word. I noticed that the damn
"Active" light was flashing on-and-off. After rebooting, if the drive
is plugged in ANYWHERE into the IDE Chains (either primary or
secondary, master or slave, alone or with another device), the system
hangs while booting into Windows98, immediately after loading
msmouse.vxd (with Step-by-Step Confirmation On, this is the final VXD
it loads before trying to go into the Windows GUI.) And what is the
drive doing while it's hanging? The damn light again.

So - I go into the BIOS. Nope, everything's fine there. It is still
detected - autoconfigured, too... So, could I maybe find a DOS Philips
flasher program? Yes, I did! An old program called "Flash'n'Play",
version 1.3, written by G. D. Vicenti of Philips Optical Storage for
use with the CDD3610. Hey, it might not flash the drive at all, but at
the very least, it had DOS-Mode detection routines that should find my
drive, right? WRONG. It found my Hitachi, when I plugged it in as
Secondary Master (with no slave). And it found the Iomega Zip drive
on Primary Slave... And when the HP was plugged in as Secondary Master
(w/o slave)? "It's not there," cried the program... One interesting
detail, if I have it on either Secondary Master or Slave WITH another
device, the whole chain times out, both times! (ATA Soft Reset, it
complained after a few minutes of trying to detect the drives).
That's rather odd because the Hitachi detects fine on its own... and
it's a shame, too, because I managed to find a backup of my original
firmware version (1.04) on the 'Net to flash it back.

I'm thinking I'm up a big creek, and will probably and unfortunately
owe my father a new CDRW drive by the time it's all said and done
(Happy Belated Father's Day, Dad!), but the fact that the BIOS is
still detecting the ID-string of the drive (while the DOS program is
not, and Windows keeps on hanging) gives me a little hope. I need
some advice, here, and I can't figure out what I did wrong. If only
this drive was within warranty (one year, right?), but I doubt HP
would cover it being flashed by Philips' firmware (even though that's
what it is...) Do you think HP or Philips will help me out here, or am
I gonna have to bite the bullet and watch the drive bite the Big One?

Please respond as quickly as possible, for I have a feeling that I may
be in trouble here. Anything that gets sent to the newsgroups in
response, I'd like to have CC'ed to my email account as well. Oh, and
I'd consider myself a bit of an expert with PCs, so don't worry about
whether I can follow any highly technical directions...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stiletto
swsti...@hotmail.com

[me (noah)]

are you sure its was the philips drive and not the SONY that also comes as a
8250i? i think the sony's are from Malaysia and the philips drives from
Hungary on the label thats on the top of the drive

"Stiletto" <swsti...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2c59dbe9.01062...@posting.google.com...

[John James]

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg40231.
html
How to ID your CDR
List 2 8250i

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/swindexes/hpcdwriter18713_swen.html
No Firmware for HP8200
http://www.ahead.de/en/Firmware.htm
No Firmware for HP8200
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/
No Firmware for HP8200

http://www.feurio.com/English/Writerdb/Data/hp_surestore8250i.html

This site indicates a 4201 / 4401 Philips.

The old flash program may be able to flash the cvt file but the data
in the OEM file may not include the 42/4401 CD's.
Check the files with the dos program.
The windows V2 has unit specific Flashtool.oem files. For example if
I used a 4801 oem file on a 4401 disk there would be no disk to flash
but if I used a 4401 oem file it would find the disk.
The windows V3 has a number of devices in the Flashtool.oem file.
When you run flashtool.exe it checks the CDR and compares it to data
in the oem file and if they match then it says flash this file. This
process is to stop us from flashing drive 12x with firmware for a
B213.

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/6893/3610mod.htm
From the above site.

If you have an OEM version of the CDD3610 recorder, you need to edit
the ATAFLASH.INI file of the firmware installation utility,as the
recorder has a different init string than the the "real" CDD3610.
Where it says "Philips CDD3610 CD-RW / CD-R", change to "IDE-CD
ReWritable-2x2x6". Make sure you put 2 spaces between "IDE-CD" and
"ReWritable-2x2x6".
OEM Philips 4201 use:

IDE-CD R/RW 4x4x24

"Stiletto" <swsti...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2c59dbe9.01062...@posting.google.com...