Pioneer A03 firmware 1.90

i tried with it on and off

swkpez, have you figured out your problem? I am in the exact same situation. Have A03, installed the 1.90 2xall firmware, burning DVD-R coasters left and right.

rubic42 Are you getting an error message? Or just burning unplayable DVD's? What brand of media are you trying?

Using Prassi PrimoDVD, I was getting communications errors, I think. Would die about 5% of the way in consistently. I was using a variety of media, TDK, PrimeDisc, even more generic stuff. So this morning I tried a few things: making sure the drive was in PIO mode and going back to the 1.68 version of the firmware. Between the two of these things it worked again. I may try going back to 1.90 and making sure PIO mode is on. My suspicion is that PrimoDVD was trying to burn at 2x even though I had set 1x. That would explain the communications errors, I think. I've read that if the drive is in PIO mode, 2x is more reliable? In any case, I think it does have something to do with PrimoDVD attempting 2x mode, because with my previous non-working setup, only DVD-Rs would fail, DVD-RW seemed to work fine, as I remember. So I think my A03 was forced into 1x writing when I was using DVD-RWs.

I used to burn fine at 1x with my drive in DMA mode with the old firmware, 1.80. It was only when I changed to 1.90 that I really had problems with making coasters at any speed.

Could be pure chance. I bought my DVR-A03 at the beginning of December, and DMA mode had worked fine until end of January. Suddenly, it threw communication failures, without changing anything in the system.

I don't know what's going on with these A03's you guys have... My A03 has been running fine in WinXP with DMA mode enabled, and the 1.90 firmware. I burn a DVD-R at least every other day and I never get coasters (knock on wood). I have a Shuttle AK11 motherboard with Athlon 1.4 cpu. and i believe the 4.32 via 4in1 drivers. I almost always use Nero 5.5.8.2 UDF/ISO mode