(original article on flashing using VPC and USB case follows)
In the past I've mentioned that Virtual PC won't flash update (firmware) of internal optical drives or Firewire cased drives, but that some readers had used a USB case with VPC to update the firmware of some burners. A Pioneer DVR-107D owner wrote the tip worked for him also and included a screenshot of the DOS window showing the update completed successfully.

" Dear Mike, After having read in your site about updating the firmware with VPC through usb connected external cases I gave it a try with my brand new Pioneer DVR-A07 XLA (aka DVR-107D) and the latest (1.13) official firmware (noted in the April 7th news page) as there's no patched one for this drive yet.
It worked without any problem. I attach a picture of the process in VPC.

I wonder why this process shouldn't work with other drives as well. (some in the past have reported it did last year.)
Many thanks for your invaluable help.
Greetings from Greece
Thanasis "

Just for the record, I asked him what version of VPC he was using and his brand of USB case (bridge board) (Also remember to set the IDE/ATAPI drive to "master" before putting it in the USB case.)
He later wrote:

" I have a USB 2 / Firewire 5.25 box from Mapower. ( http://www.mapower.com/map-h51.htm)
The 107D was set to master.
VPC is in version 6.1.0 and Mac OS X in 10.3.3 "

Any USB case/bridge compatible with VPC/OS X (i.e. recognized properly in the OS) should also work.