Thanks, Michael

I'm not entirely up to speed on all my terminology here, but your story does sound similar to mine. I am thinking both drives in my new laptop run on the same IDE channel, meaning the ND6500A needs to be a slave. If I'm reading what you say correctly, "reverse ATA" means slave on the primary IDE channel, but please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, as compared with your story, I have some serious limitations. I have a floppy for my old laptop, but only for the same hot-swappable bay as the optical drive, so no booting from floppies. My new laptop has no floppy, and I have no desktop to access. Essentially, I'm getting into DOS with NTFS access using my ultimate boot CD, and I'm able to execute 6500boot.bin and 6500main.bin, which are residing on my hard drive, but they don't work on my ND6500A at this point, nor do any DOS flash files with the 6500 DOS flasher. Either there's something I have to do with my BIOS and/or a driver to permit appropriate access to the drive in this scenario, or I might have to try jumping pins with solder or (I'm scheming) something easily removable.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get some sort of confirmation on the actual controllers in the Z70V, and I've seen some suggestion that it has only one IDE ATA channel, but I'm still not sure. I'm also about to try looking in Windows on that laptop to see how the two drives (one being my old CDRW) are being controlled now that I've got the hard disk set as slave.

(in reply to michaelc)

If the 6500 shows up in Windows XP & works as you say, try flashing in Windows to Liggys 2.24 bitsetting firmware. This will put it back to Master and should work in the old laptop again.

http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/6500/224bitset.zip

Try it in both the old lap top and the new lap top to see how it shows up.
Sounds like the old laptop wanted Master and the new is wanting a slave drive.
Firmware 4.24 won't work if you don't run "boot6500.bat" first.

If you get it set back to master, you can run the Boot6500 program with it installed in the old laptop (from DOS).  When you reboot, it will no longer be recoganized in the old laptop.  Move the 6500 to the new laptop where it should be recoganized as 6100a Slave. Then boot to dos and run the 6500main program. When you reboot it should be 6500 again with firmware 4.21.  You can then flash it to Liggys 4.24 bit setting firmware from Windows.

Let me know how you make out.

Michael

(in reply to Jasman)

If it were only that easy, Michael. Although the drive shows up and works in XP (it shows up on Device 0, secondary IDE channel), it won't take any flash, either in Windows or DOS. It just hangs and the drive light flashes when the flasher aborts. I'm trying to figure out how to bridge pins 45 and 47, hoping that it will then take a flash, but the way the connector is made, I have very few options for making that bridge. Either I do it inside the drive or I have to figure out the pin configuration on the 68-pin multibay connector. I may have to try to trace that pin by pin, since I don't want to put solder inside the drive.

(in reply to michaelc)

Jasman,
I don't think soldering the pins 45 to 47 will help you. That just forces the drive to MASTER. Your last post said it is already showing up in windows as MASTER (device 0) on the secondary IDE channel. But, I guess it would not hurt to try.  Which laptop do you see it that way?  Does it show up in both loptops?

Note: I could not get 6500boot to run properly from a CD or my hard drive. It just kept saying something like ‘firmware not changed correctly, 6500boot.bat missing.’ I had to put it on a floppy to get it to work right.  You may be having the same problem..

(in reply to Jasman)

I think I've been hallucinating. I was sure I read that the pin 45/47 junction forced slave, but it forces master. Of course, that won't solve my problem. However, I think I have the information that will solve my problem - I just have to have time to switch out my hard drive. Turns out I was using a drive flashed by Compaq, which gives other computer BIOSes a problem. This would explain all of my issues, if it's true, and I feel like hitting my head against a wall. Now I just hope I can get the ND6500A flashed back, even though it's currently working ok. Thanks for all the advice.

(in reply to michaelc)

Okay, I have read the entire thread.  There is at least oneother person who has the same problem I do. 

As it has been stated the NEC 6500A "as delivered" is set to Secondary Slave.  My Panasonic CF-48 only uses Primary Master and Secondary Master drives and this cannot be changed in the bios.  The Panasonic takes about 10 to 15 seconds longer to boot now that the NEC 6500A has been installed.  But it does boot (XP)and does burn disks but slowly.
Nero Infotool reports the drive is set to Secondary Slave with DMA Off. 

The 6500boot.bat calls BT6100R1 and adds parameters that obviously set the drive's bios "boot block" to whatever is required for "reverse-ATA".  What would the parameters be to set mine to Secondary Master? 
Necflash -scan reports my drive is "1.1.0".  I'm guessing that means Secondary Slave, and a report of "1.0.0" would mean Secondary Master. 
Anybody ever tried to use the BT6100R1 code to set the drive to something other than "reverse-ATA"??
Would I have to then reflash my 2.24 bin file after setting the drive to Secondary Master?

Liggy I'm relying on you!!

Mike

(in reply to Jasman)

Mike,
The ND-6500 comes as 'cable select', at least mine did. Whether it is primary or secondary depends on which IDE channel (cable) you physically connect it to in your computer.  The laptop signal on connector pin 47 sets the drive to Master or Slave. 

My laptop caused the drive to be set to Master, which would not allow me to boot up since my hard drive was already the master. I only had one ide channel, so the 6500 needed to be changed to Slave.  Since I can't change the signel on my cable, I needed to flash the drive with 6500boot to reverse the ATA signal command.  After flashing, that same cable signal in my laptop caused the 6500 to show up as Slave. I also had to flash a 4.xx firmware to match with the reverse ATA. If you flash the 6500boot, it will flip the way it shows up now. So the slave would become master. (once you do this, there appears to be no way to go back, your drive will always be reverse ATA. Your firmware choices will also become limited, as you will need to use the 4.xx firmwares. If I'm wrong, someone explain how to undo the reverse ATA)

Before flashing, you should try and turn DMA on for the 6500 on the secondary Slave position. (Your laptop may not let you if there is nothing on the secondary Master, but it's worth a try). Goto 'system properties/device manager, select the secondary IDE channel/properties and set "Transfer Mode" to DMA if available, then reboot.




Note: the picture is not from my laptop, it's from a desk top pc. I used it for an example. My laptop only had one IDE channel.

(in reply to MikeG)

Hello,

I'm having problems installing a 6500 on a Toshiba G10 laptop.

The firmware has been flashed to 4.24 and can be detected and works correctly if you "trick" the bios into thinking the correct dvd drive (the original drive) is in the laptop.

The "trick" is to boot with the original dvd drive and pause the boot process, take out the old drive and replace with the new drive.

I tried running 6500main, it comes back with an error saying it was expecting a different issue, our drive is: 0.00 and it was looking for 0.01

If anyone could offer and help as to how they have got this drive working with a toshiba laptop, it'd be a great help!

Southgate.

(in reply to rush911)

southgate,
Did you flash 6500boot first and turn your drive into a 6100a with reverse ATA? That is step one. Step two is to flash 6500main which turns it back into a 6500a with a firmware of 4.21.

How does your original drive show up in the laptop? Master/Slave, Primary/Secondary ???

How did you flash 4.24?

Step 1, flash 6500Boot and turn drive into 6100a.

(in reply to southgate)

I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve this.  My Panasonic uses both IDE channels, Primary and Secondary.

The hardrive is the Primary Master and the bios says there is nothing attached to the Secondary Master.  Unfortunately that's what it's looking for, something attached to the Secondary Master.  As a result the boot time takes longer and I can't turn on DMA. 

I'm reluctant to try the 6500Boot / Main routine because I'm not sure what I'd end up with.  My drive is seen now as a Secondary Slave.  If I run the 6500Boot then Main what will I end up with?

I already tried the soldering trick and ended up trashing the first drive.  I had to buy another one. I still have the same problem but I don't want to buy another drive if I screw this up.

The reason I was under the impression that the drive shipped as a Secondary Slave is that somebody in an earlier post said that's what NEC had told them.  It does make sense that the drive would be sent out as CS though. 

I looked over the BT6100R1 command in the 6500Boot.bat and saw some parameters that look like when you run it, it sets whether it's master, slave, primary or secondary.  Do I have that right?  On the first page of this thread somebody wrote that it's impossible to set the drive as a Master. Is that true?  That's exactly what I need to do, set it to Secondary Master.  Will the flashing of a reverse-ATA firmware do that for me?

Mike

(in reply to michaelc)

Is it possible to flash the nd-6500 to nd 6650? TIA.

(in reply to MikeG)

quote:

ORIGINAL: vize

Is it possible to flash the nd-6500 to nd 6650? TIA.

No! Read about it overhere: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=137796

Hi All,

I've got a HP Nx6120 that has a ND-6450A in it but, my notebook only has a single channel and the DVD-RW is the slave.

Is their any way of telling if the channel is set within the firmware or hardware set?  And if so, which 6500A firmware is compatible with my configuration?

My drive is currently running firmware V2.36

Thanks in Advance.

PS -> This may be a daft question, but what does the bitsetting actually do?

(in reply to emperor)

since your firmware is 2.36 then you don't have a reversed ATA drive/firmware, so you can use the latest 2.24 versions

(in reply to UlkeshKosh)

quote:

ORIGINAL: MikeG
I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve this.  My Panasonic uses both IDE channels, Primary and Secondary.
The hardrive is the Primary Master and the bios says there is nothing attached to the Secondary Master.  Unfortunately that's what it's looking for, something attached to the Secondary Master.  As a result the boot time takes longer and I can't turn on DMA. 
I'm reluctant to try the 6500Boot / Main routine because I'm not sure what I'd end up with.  My drive is seen now as a Secondary Slave.  If I run the 6500Boot then Main what will I end up with?
I already tried the soldering trick and ended up trashing the first drive.  I had to buy another one. I still have the same problem but I don't want to buy another drive if I screw this up.
The reason I was under the impression that the drive shipped as a Secondary Slave is that somebody in an earlier post said that's what NEC had told them.  It does make sense that the drive would be sent out as CS though. 
I looked over the BT6100R1 command in the 6500Boot.bat and saw some parameters that look like when you run it, it sets whether it's master, slave, primary or secondary.  Do I have that right?  On the first page of this thread somebody wrote that it's impossible to set the drive as a Master. Is that true?  That's exactly what I need to do, set it to Secondary Master.  Will the flashing of a reverse-ATA firmware do that for me?
Mike

I have the same problem here I think.

Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 has 2 controllers:
HD is Primary Master
Teac CD224e (cdrom) is Secondary Master

When I put in Nec ND6500a (which is obviously set to CS-Master) the bios says nothing attached to the Secondary Master (the 2-dary master-controller even disappears in bios/OS)

I noticed reading several fora (and this thread) the ND6500 can bet set to:
CS-Master
CS-Slave
Fixed Slave.

Obviously I need Fixed Master (or am i wrong?)
So I might end up having about the same question as MikeG:
Is it possible or not to set the ND6500A to (secondary) Fixed Master or not ?

(in reply to MikeG)

Yes, I have a HP DV1240US and my NEC 6500 is set to (Secondary) Master.

(in reply to gerbruggeman)