I think my LTR12101B (12x10x32) is finally dead. I bought it new for $100, and at the time it blew all those 4x and 8x drives away. It was a great drive all though its life, and except for its hate of Memorex CD-R's (the expensive ones! it just loves the cheap stuff!). It was packaged Universal BusLink started out with LS38 firmware.

It's been hooked my Mac for quite some time, working well, except for the fact that it was not iTunes compatible, and seemed to die after sleep. I heard that a firmware update could fix both these problems, so I gave it a try with the Windows util from their website.

Part way through the flash, it told me that ASPI for Windows could not be found, and failed. This wasted the BIOS. I tried this on several different machines with and without ASPI software installed, and the results were always the same.

I found the old Lite-On DOS util, pflash, and managed, using the jumper trick, to flash an LS17 firmware onto it. While it would now burn CD's, it threw errors after burning Disc-At-Once, and wouldn't read RW discs.

So, I downloaded a binary of LSRB firmware, seemingly the latest revision, and tried flashing it with that. The flash worked, but the drive didn't. I tried putting LS17 back on, but got compare errors, and the drive was once again useless.

I now got a copy of LS38 firmware, but I get compare errors again. I tried mtkflash, but that just won't work, period. Have I flashed this drive one too many times, and destroyed the flash ROM? What can I do to just get it back to its original state. I'm done messing with this thing and want my $100 investment back...

God this was a long post. Thanks for reading all of it.