Jan70, well done and thank you.

This one I just burned, looks good and plays perfectly.

Burned at 18x with CloneDVD2.

That's OK. I'm talking about SH-S182M. Anyway is still strange. And of course it can not have problems with all the new computers. I can not explain ans as far i can see, neither can "the samsung".

@m.petru - My apologies, I thought you said the SH-S182D

OK, well, I tested my SH-S182D with several different brands/makers of DVD-R, all are readable on 3 drives, including the SH-S182D itself. Also, the discs play perfectly on a standalone.

I'm using SB02 at the moment, I might flash to the official SB04 and see if that changes things.

@C0deKing - beautiful burn

I just received a Samsung S182D as RMA for my LG4167 (I know, that's really strange, but I think that I'll never buy agaiin on that store ).

I can confirm too the lead-in problem. I can't take a picture, but the disc shows the same issue posted previously.

The drive came with the SB02 firmware, and i did a burn to see if also my drive is affected by this problem. And I'm not happy to see that this issue is also in my drive

The samsung sees the disc burned by itself as a blank media, but it run anyway the TRT, even if with a bizzarre graph. The liteon 1693 can scan this disc without problems, and the Sony/Optiarc 170 can read this disc without problems.

Pics are the following: burn, scan with liteon 1693, TRT with samsung, TRT with Sony 170.

Right now the drive is installed on an external box.

So you must be very pleased that Jan70 has been able to obtain this fixed firmware to cure the problem.

hehe I'll try tomorrow

I was curious to see if the drive was ok out of the box... well the plastic bag actually

EDIT:

I posted also a scan of a +R media here

Note, I ammended the link in my above post to the SB04 firmware for the SH-S182D.

Just downloaded, many thanks CK

EDIT again

Can this drive be flashed if installed in an external box or it require to be installed internally?

Thanks. This Laser AZO MCC 03RG20 MIHK burns better than my current Verbatim MCC 03RG20 and it's well priced. Now I have to see how well it stands the test of time...

I think the Samsung flasher does allow the flashing of external drives. IIRC it's the LG flasher that doesn't.

jon2121 - Question x2 ...
did you have the drives as master or slave on the chain?
and Primary or secondary chain?

I was trying something new with my SH-S182D... I had an external USB/Firewire case for a hard drive and with a little burst of insanity... I plugged the thing into the burner... its totally the wrong size and looks horrible... but it works...

I burned a disc... its a disc the drive could see... and read... and the leadin was the right size. And other drives would read it...

With jon2121's tests... and the Sony Information I stumbled over, and with my problems and trying different spots on the chain, I think that some of the drives just dislike where they get placed...

My Chipset is Nvidia Nforce 4 SLI, I tried it on the 2nd chain as slave and it was no good, when I put it on as master it worked slightly better, but still not totally correct.

I am debating trying to find a real external drive box to throw it into as I finally had success with the drive that way and just keep it as usb burner...

I have performed several tests on different boards with the three drives and the newest SB04 firmware. I had problems with two of the boards I tested.

The first is the ECS P4M800PRO-M-----VIA P4M800Pro&VT8237R+ chipset. In Windows explorer, DVD-rs could not be read as master or slave on all ide ports, usb 2.0 & firewire connections. Burning software such as Nero, Sonic and Roxio showed the dvd-r disks as blank.
On the external connections, I could get dvds created in dvdmf3.5 to play. The disk had to be opened in the dvd app. It also took a little time to read the disk.

The second was a HP DV8000 Turion 64 laptop. It has an AMD 1100 chipset. I only tried a usb 2.0 connection. Windows explorer still would not read the -r disks, but dvds played fine.

All the boards below had no problem with any of the disks:
BOARD---------------------------CHIPSET
BIOSTAR P4M80-M7 A------------VIA P4M800 + VT8237
BIOSTAR U8648-Z1--------------P4x266/A-VT8233
PCCHIPS M906HLU v3.3 ----------845E
MSI K8NGM-V--------------------GEFORCE 6100-NFORCE 410
BIOSTAR K8M800----------------vIA M7AK8M800/VT8237R
BIOSTAR NFORCE4 4X----------- NF4 4X-A7

Maybe others can posts their experiences with boards from other manufacturers.

MSI MS-7173 mobo, with ATi Radeon Xpress 200/ATi SB450

Abslotuely no probs here.

guys, I am using the SB01 in my SH-182D, should I update it to the SB04 CD Freaks edition?



thanks

I installed the sb04 freaks version of the firmware on a couple of the drives. On my pc with the ECS board that would not read any of my dvd-r discs, I came up with some interesting results:

Usb 2.0, regardless of what is installed on the IDE ports ----All discs could be read.
IDE connection with a hard drive or by itself, as both master and slave---No discs could be read.
IDE connection with an NEC ND-3550A DVD +/-RW, as both master and slave---All discs could be read.

On this motherboard, why would the 182D work properly only when connected on the same IDE port with another dvd drive, but not with a hard drive or by itself?

I don't have a clue, but I bet Samsung does. This is just my own theory. It is just supposition and is not based on any specific knowledge or information etc., etc..

As this forum shows, Samsung has known about the incompatibility problems with this drive for a long time. They may have been aware of potential problems even before it was released. If so, they did what automakers and many other large corporations do. They weigh the cost of an upfront fix VS taking care of problems as they arise. This would make since if you can assume the following to be essentially true:

1. The drive seems to work properly on most boards right out of the box.
2. Any drive installed in an OEM pc would work.
3. It probably works on some problem boards when on a port by itself, but not with a hard drive. I have already seen that it works on my machine with another dvd drive. Most people buying one to install in their pc would put it on the second ide port with their old cd/dvd drive or by itself to replace that old drive.

That just leaves those of us who are unlucky enough to buy this drive to use on a problem board in an incompatible configuration. I would say that accounts for an extremely small number of drives compared to the total.

jon2121 - I would begin to think you are correct. The Sony help for the one gentlman about slowing down the ide chain could have made things operate differently.
And I think they weighed the possibility and decided to OEM out the drives and move on to a newer version of the drive. The problem is people who see these issues posted, but dunno the drive they are about to buy is just a rebranded SH-S182D.
While I have heard of some products not working with some chipsets in the past, I never heard about drives having this problem... guess you learn something new all the time.

I think CompUSA as well as Sony are aware there are more problems surfacing with the drive... CompUSA has had the Mad Dog version of the drive on sale almost constantly since this issue was discovered, and Sony was running rebates lowering the cost on the DRU-830A... This lets them clear them out, and if only a few get returned as "defective" they return them to the manufacterer and get repaid. Then they don't order that product to restock the shelves...

The other possibilty that just came to me while pondering the world was... are you using 40 wire ribbon or 80 wire cable?

When I was using the SH-S182D just as normal in my machine I had 80 wire and it was secondary. When I tried it as master, the results were slightly better but still not right, I was using a 40 wire ribbon cable. And now that its frankensteined into an external hard drive case, its on a 40 wire ribbon. I think I am going to try to find a decently priced external USB case designed for burners to try, I tried to burn an 8x media tonight and it never got much higher than 4x for most of the burn, i wandered away for a smoke in the middle, but the drives buffer was running dangerously low over and over so I doubt I will get a burn higher than 4 until I find a case thats designed for burners...

CARLOS R - if your having problems with the creation of DVD-R discs and have the larger lead-in, I would suggest the SB04 CDFE of the firmware. If you have a compatiable chipset thats not causing problems it corrects the problems.


Motherboard--------------------ChipSet----------------------Result
Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-Sli---------Nvidia nForce4 Sli (amd)------Fails (on secondary chain)

I tested the CDF modified version of the firmware, but it didn't solve the problem.

I tested the drive connected on an external box, but any -R disc burned by this drive, even with SB01 original firmware, still have a bad written lead-in.

All -R discs burned in this drive are still seen as empty media by the samsung, but can be read by other drives.

I have a nforce2 mainboard, but I didn't tested the drive internally.

Moreover, this drive is not able to write RAM discs, whereas the same disc was written without any problem by my Sony 170.

I returned again the drive to the store, but I'm sure that it will not solve the problem. I lost my money, and never will buy again in that store

As a sidenote: even if the drive is connected on an external box, the flasher do a computer reset at the end of flash, without giving any possibility to simply unplug the drive. That's really annoying

No such problems here, Geno. I flashed from SB02 to SB04 CDF-Edition and burned a DVD-R no problem in an external USB enclosure. The disc is recognized and read by the Samsung and other drives as well. Haven't tried RAM and this "Made in Philippines" drive looks and feels flimsier than others I'm used to though.

Sorry to hear about your bad experience.

When I tried to erase a RAM disc it remained for about 30 minutes at 0% (I used Imgburn), and after that I got an error. Sorry, I forgot to post the pic in my previous post

have you ever tried using sh-s182d as internal dvd writer?
sh-s182d is not a external dvd writer.
your problem could be the chipset in your external box or motherboard.

My box have a NEC chipset, and it's compatible with all drives I tried until now.

Anyway I can't do further tests because I returned again the drive to the store.

geno888, here's the trick I use to get around this:

1/ Move the Flasher tool away from the center of the screen and start the flash (this avoids it blocking the last warning dialog).
2/ At the end of the flash, right click on the task bar and select "Task Manager".
3/ Select the "Processes" tab.
4/ Find the flash process "SFDNWIN" (clicking the "Image Name" column header helps with this, as it sorts the processes by name).
5/ Right click on the process and select "End Process Tree"
6/ Click "Yes" at the warning dialog

Thank you very much for the trick CK

So I was thinking of the possibilites that could be causing the problem...

Wire - 40 vs 80
Ide Chain Location - Primary/Secondary Master/Slave
Chipset

and then another odd one came to mind, I haven't had time to try it yet...

What about having Hard Drive S.M.A.R.T. enabled...
I know most people don't know about the setting and don't enable it as on newer motherboards its in a hidden settings in the bios... But some machine might have it enabled by default and others not...
I know the system doesn't use it where there is a Burner located, but I wonder if having another device on the same chain using it might be causing some problems... If i get motivated I will turn it off and try try again...

I hope it is as simple as smart enabled or disabled. Even if it isn't, you might be on to something. An improper bios setting seems more likely to be the culprit than the actual chipset itself.

My 182d worked properly when connected on a port with another dvd drive, but would not work properly when by itself or with a hard drive.

On this board, is there some incorrect bios setting that gets corrected when two optical drives are connected on the same port? And is it user changeable or hardcoded into the bios firmware?

It might not be just a setting for the ide ports since it also appears to affect how drives are read on a usb 2.0 connection.

I will do a little comparing and testing as well.