Friday's (March 2001) news has a listing and links to the 1.0n firmware update for Yamaha 2100 (16/10/40) SCSI and Firewire drives. (See related links below.) There is no IDE drive updater yet (as of this date). A reader with a SCSI external drive attached to a SCSI card noted an error happened during the update and the drive was not usable, although one reader noted in the database his ext. SCSI flashed fine attached to the same SCSI brand of card. (I wonder if the drive was terminated properly.) Other readers generally noted success. The reader reports include some using the drive in a non-Yamaha Firewire case.

Reader Reports on the 1.0n Firmware Update: (latest reports first)

" No problems here with the Yamaha 1.0n firmware, I have a G4/450 DP, with a Adaptec 2930 SCSI card (latest ROM chip on it), the Yamaha 2100 is an OEM unit (no Yamaha markings on the front, CRW2100SNB), which I installed into a rather old external SCSI case. Update went flawlessly.
Regards,
Braden M. "

" Hi Mike,
The update worked very fine for me, the utility even told me to disable the Toast CD Reader extension. I did so, restarted, and flashed the drive whithout ant problem. I had trouble before with this drive with CD copy, it would take A LOT of time to scan the sessions, I haven't tested it yet, but I hope it fixes that ....
Let me know if you want more info. "

"I have the Yamaha 2100E IDE in an ADS case - currently rev. 1.0k. I decided to try the Firewire for the 2100IX (Firewire model) flasher, even though it doesn't exactly match my model - despite the warnings from Yamaha. Followed the directions included with the flasher, and Yamaha flasher didn't recognize the drive (no big surprise, since it's not in the Yamaha Firewire case), so I still have 1.0k.
Brian B.

" I followed the instructions, which said to disable the drivers (I use Intech's CD Speedtools, 'cause the apple drivers didn't recognize it, and the toast extension would stop working after several hours of inactivity.) The drive had previously been unbootable.

Instead of disabling the driver, I just started with extensions off, and ran the updater. After restarting, everthing not only seens ok, but I put in the OS 9 cd, and lo! it appeared in the startup disk control panel, and started up! I'm very happy about that.

I imagine it would now work with Apple's drivers, but Intech's are working just fine for me.

FYI, I just got toast 5 titanium, and it's driver (upon install, it automatically installed its driver, which loaded before intech's, thus disabling the latter) no longer has a "generic" look to it. The CD icon looked just like apple's and intechs own shiney icon. I don't know if it means the driver is better or what ...

And speaking of Toast 5 (sorry this is off topic-but maybe you can use this info), it burns VideoCDs great. It includes a quicktime plug-in that encodes VCD safe mpegs from quicktime files... but though they look just fantastic on a set-top DVD player, the audio is off by about a half a second.

I suspect it to be a problem with toast's encoder because the sample MPEG's they include burn and playback just fine.

I encoded directly from DV-streams.

Computer info:
Pmac 9600/200 w/ xlr8 carrier w/ mercury 350 zif g3 (233 mhz cache w/ spec processing enabled)
Theodore C. "

" "If you're not having any problems, it may be best to leave well enough alone since if a firmware update doesn't complete, it can result in a useless drive." (comments from Friday's news-Mike)

Hi Mike. I should read this before I take the Plunge and update the firmware to 1.0n on my Yamaha SCSI 2100 CD RW external. As I'm writing this, the drive is in a box ready to be shipped to Yamaha. Fortunately is under warranty. The tech support at Yamaha they didn't even know about the update for the Mac. Later, after a 10 minutes on hold I was told that this update is for the internal version of the 2100 only. The read me file does not specify this. But what's the difference? An external 2100 is just the same as the internal one that was put in a case to be used on the external bus of the Mac. Am I correct? I'm advising any one to stay a way of this update. Yamaha has a good tech support and good products but their interest and efforts for the Mac platform is a big minus.
Best regards
Evan I.

(he later wrote)

The drive was attached to the external bus of an initio miles U2 card on S900 UMAX/ XLR8 G3 450/MAC OS 8.6 and it was the only devise attached. It was working flawless (See my input in the Drive Compatibility searchable database). I don't really know why I decided to upgrade the firmware. But here is what happened: I disabled the toast reader as instructed in the " read me" file. When I launched the updater, It found the drive, two progression bars were visible on the desktop ready to begin the process, and immediately an error message starting by a 7+++ (I don't remember the rest) interrupted the process. I think, all the update did, was to disable the current firmware without ever place the new one. The red light on the drive started blinking like crazy and it was impossible to open the tray and insert a CD. Not even with a pin inserted in the little hole on the tray. I downloaded the update 4 times and tried again. No chance. The drive is now at Yamaha for replacement or repair. "

One reader in today's Drive Database noted he flashed a SCSI 2100 with an Initio card fine in a 9600 I believe.

" I have the Yamaha branded firewire version of the 2100. It can preloaded with firmware 1.0h and using the mac flasher it flashed without a hitch to 1.0n. The only problem I had was the installer could not copy the needed extensions to the system folder so I had to do it myself and reboot. I ran the flash util it recognized the drive on the firewire bus and flashed without any problems
Mike "

Related Links:

Here's the link to the page that lists Mac updaters. Scroll down that page to see the SCSI and IEEE1394 (Firewire) models. I did not see an IDE flasher there for the Mac. Newer drives may already have this firmware update in them. They have a page with a list of changes in 1.0n including:

• Improved audio ripping performance of a scratched CD
• Problem fixed so that the written data can be read properly when written incrementally in Track-At-Once mode.
• Problem fixed so that cancel operation can be performed properly during simulation in Session-At-Once mode.

The changes page lists other firmware versions as well for those that may have a very early drive.
If you're not having any problems, it may be best to leave well enough alone since if a firmware update doesn't complete, it can result in a useless drive. I welcome any reports from owners that have tried these flashers.

Related Links: There's an older page here with Yamaha 2100 owner comments, and more up-to-date reports in the Drive Compatibility Database.