What is Firmware..and where do I find out..what version of firmware..I have for my dvd-writer..and also..IDE...same questions...(where can I find it..on my computer etc...

Firmware: Software that makes a piece of hardware work and function. Firmware is a firm part of that hardware and doesn't have to be loaded by the user of this hardware. Firmware can be updated to increase performance of the hardware or to fix a problem of the hardware device.
Find out about firmware version: The installed IDE-hardware including the firmware version is shown during boot up of computer. You can also use "Infotool" of Nero burning software.
IDE: "Integrated Device Elektronics" or "Intelligent Drive Elektronics" ist still the most common interface between the motherboard of a computer and a harddisk or an optical drive. When you google for IDE you will find lots and lots of information. The manual of your computer will tell you, where to find the IDE connectors on your motherboard. It will also tell you, about the IDE speed that your motherboard supports. Optical drives normally connect via IDE to the motherboard.

basicly the firmware controls what media types it reads+writes/reading+writing speeds/media compatbility and writing quality (of course the writing quality also depended on the quality of the media itself) and its stored on a chip inside your burner and of course can be modified with newer offical/non offical firmware ,since its an important part of every burner if firmware flashing fails your drive will likely be dead but if youll do it right it will be just fine then again if youll have bad luck with power lets say a power blackout while its flashing then it will be dead but luckily firmware flashing takes only few seconds , you can find out what firmware your burner currently have using nero infotool which comes with nero but if you dont have nero then you can get infotool standalone click here when in goto drive tab , anyway i strongly suggest youll look at disc quality threads with diffrent firmwares (assuming there are such for your specific burner on this forum) cuz writing quality on certain mediacodes may vary from firmware to firmware so you should look into it and decide which firmware is best to use depening on what mediacodes you usally use

now bout ide cables , they are used for data transfer between the burner to your hard drive and vice versa of course they are also used on any other optical drives and ide hard drives , first lets overview the transfer modes ide have several data transfer modes which are

optical drives mostly use udma 2 except for few recent pioneer/plextor drives that uses udma4 , hard drives uses udma 5 and maxtor ones uses 6 ,some old hard drives uses udma4 , info bout the cables: there are 2 types of ide cables 40wires and 80wires and they are all 40pin an 80wires ide cable supports upto udma6 while a 40wires supports only upto udma2 its best to use 80wires ide cables for all devices you can see why on this page click here also in most cases using an 80wires ide cable with burners instead of 40wires improves the overall writing quality and there are ide cables with 2 connectors that supports only 1 device and with 3 connectors that supports upto 2 devices 1 connector goes to the motherboard , now how the cables look first there are 2 shapes flat and round the flat ones are cheaper and the round ones improve the airflow inside the case also all round ide cables are 80wires , now for pictures

a flat 80wires have blue/grey/black connectors like this


a flat 40wires have all black connectors like this


round ide cables basicly look like this (colors will vary unlike flat ones they come in various colors)


as for where you can find em , behind the drives ,naturally youll need to open the case to see em

edit forgot to mention to see/enable udma modes see this guide click here
device 0 is the master device and 1 is slave you can see which are on what with nero infotool at configuration tab , also sometimes a drive can run in a lower udma mode then it should or pio mode which is very slow this is usally due to udma settings set wrong in bios its best to set it to auto

FWIW;
on the IDE topic-side
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATAPI

To See your IDE info (and much more);
Use "Everest" (Free Personal Home Ed) from www.lavalys.com or similar

Also;
Right click My Computer | Properties | Advanced | Device Manager -- expand IDE/ATA ATAPI Controllers (click the + sign) and choose Properties | Settings, etc

* nice work though from the other responders - as they've written a lot to help explain - a thank you to them

nice post phil

Ya....U guys...ROCK!!.....A BIG THANK YOU!!!...to all of you...im finnaly getting a hang of this...and I think I might be able to resolve..my burner problem