Hello all.. I have searched and read many messages here and on other sites concerning flashing the NEC ND-3500AG burner. I know this is an older drive but I would still like to figure this out if possible. I have some movies that I would like to burn to DVD but every attempt ends in an "illegal disc" error regardless of the software package. After doing some research it appears that I have decent media - Maxell (Prodisc, actually) 16x DVD-R. Unfortunately it also appears that my firmware version does not support this particular media. Now here's the problem - I have downloaded every firmware package that I can find for this drive (upwards of 20!) and none of them will flash the drive. Whenever I start one of them, it reads the current version and when it starts flashing I just get a simple "Error". The light on the drive flashes rapidly and I can no longer use it until I restart the computer. I have even tried going "backwards" by attempting to flash with earlier versions of the firmware but get the same results. I've also tried DOS versions of the flashes but with no luck there either (could be "pilot error" as it turns out that using DOS is not like riding a bike and you do forget after 15 years!). The curious thing is that I have found on a couple of firmware upgrade packages language that states "Can only be upgraded from versions 2.16, 2.18 and 2.19". Also, I cannot find the 2.17 firmware ANYWHERE! I remember flashing this drive when I first bought it. Is there something wrong with the 2.17 firmware? Still it seems that I should be able to flash to anything else - has it "locked down" my drive? I am going to try to find some older 8x media that I have used in the past (I probably haven't burned anything with the drive in 1-2 years) and if it works then I guess I will just be happy with that. Of course after not being used for that period of time I guess it's possible that the drive has just gone bad. I can still read all media just fine with it. Even still I am very perplexed with the firmware problem. Any suggestions will be much appreciated!
2017 can be found here: http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/en/NEC-ND-3500A/ as well as liggy's own bitsetting firmware 2.1b. I think you have the right idea going back to 8X media as I don't think the firmware update will help you. Additionally Prodisc are not the best known for being good media. I would suggest Verbatim.
