I bought one last week from a seller advertising them as new but i see another seller saying there are no new BenQ VAD6038, he say's look at the manufacturing date, which means nothing to me because they can be old but still new.
2. I flashed my drive with 0800 F/W, 1.61 & 1.6 0800, with each firmware it rips originals fast until it hits 50% then it slows to a dead crawl, obviously when it tries to read the second layer.
And it will not read any DL+R's or even show there is a disc in the drive, when i try to rip already made and used for gameplay, which makes me wonder if it is new and if i used it for a replacement drive for a 360 what good would it be if it will not read recordable media.
3. If it is a new drive should it have firmware and a key to dump the first time hooking it up to my PC ?
When i went to flash it, it dumped the firmware already on it then i dumped the key then thought, if it's new why would it have firmware and a key to dump if they are married to it's specific mobo.
4. Seeing as it is intended for a dedicated ripper along side my Samsung SH-D163B could i plug it directly into a Sata port on my motherboard instead of leaving it hooked to my VIA Sata/PCI card ?
Originally posted by noahtuck: 1. Can you actually buy them new?
I bought two new BenQs a year ago.
Originally posted by noahtuck: 2. I flashed my drive with 0800 F/W, 1.61 & 1.6 0800, with each firmware it rips originals fast until it hits 50% then it slows to a dead crawl, obviously when it tries to read the second layer.
Mine has 1.6 on it and it blazes through both layers at about 8X.
Originally posted by noahtuck: 3. If it is a new drive should it have firmware and a key to dump the first time hooking it up to my PC? When i went to flash it, it dumped the firmware already on it then i dumped the key then thought, if it's new why would it have firmware and a key to dump if they are married to it's specific mobo.
The two I bought had identical firmware keys on them. So it probably depends on who/where you get them from as to whether or not keys are on them.
Originally posted by noahtuck: 4. Seeing as it is intended for a dedicated ripper along side my Samsung SH-D163B could i plug it directly into a Sata port on my motherboard instead of leaving it hooked to my VIA Sata/PCI card ?
I would say since you have a Sata VIA card, it's because your onboard sata is incompatible. So yes, you'd have to connect it to the VIA card. Mine connects to my VIA card for ripping. It stays in the 360 because I use this. It lets me change between "gameplaying" and "flashing/ripping" modes by flipping a switch. I don't know if it's worth the 50 bucks, but I bought mine used for about 15 dollars.
