How to find out the firmware version of an optical-drive?

SoftHacker · June 28, 2011, 5:23pm

I want to know how to find out what firmware version is on my optical-drive.
And also if an update is available, how to update the firmware.

thanks in advance

DenverD · June 28, 2011, 5:44pm

On 06/28/2011 05:36 PM, SoftHacker wrote:
>
> I want to know how to find out what firmware version is on my
> optical-drive.
> And also if an update is available, how to update the firmware.

if it were me i’d check the manufacturer’s web site…and, join their
forum or mail list with those kinds of questions…

if the manufacturer doesn’t have such i’d start with google search or
http://www.tomshardware.com/

–
DD
-Caveat-Hardware-Software-

martin_helm · June 28, 2011, 6:00pm

First thing I would do is more or less what DenverD wrote, I would check the
vendors web pages.
Second thing you can try (if wodim is installed on your machine)


sudo wodim -prcap dev=/dev/sr0

of course you have to replace /dev/sr0 with the device name of your optical
drive.
It gives a lot of output if you are lucky, where you can see something like
this in between (this is from my PC so your output looks of course
different)


Vendor_info    : 'Optiarc '
Identification : 'DVD RW AD-7200S '
Revision       : '1.83'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-R/DVD-RW.

Revision is the firmware version. To update firmware the vendors often only
support upgrade from windows, you have to check that.

martin_helm · June 28, 2011, 6:03pm

Sorry I forgot to add, you may get the version also with lsscsi, here the
example


martinh@sirius:~> lsscsi | grep dvd
[1:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  Optiarc  DVD RW AD-7200S  1.83  /dev/sr0

SoftHacker · June 28, 2011, 6:16pm

thanks
wodim works for me

and updating no problem…
i have a small 20GB Partition with WinXP because i want to watch my Blu-Ray’s with ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater 3 and 5 http://www.arcsoft.com/
for linux there is no bluray player with ati hardware acceleration