🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 23 Jan 2000 14:49:59 -1000, none@none.com (None) wrote:

>Someone had posted info on how you can make the Creative 8/4/32 be 
>recognized as a Plextor 8/4/32.  Does it really work and if it does, can 
>you please repost it?  Also, has anyone tried to flash it with Plextor's 
>firmware and have it work?

I works, sort of.  If you have your computer OFF, and hold down the
eject button on the 8432 during power on (only a few seconds needed),
the BIOS, and subsequently Windows will "see" the drive as a Plextor.
It has been theorized that this is due to some deep firmware
bug/feature which creative never removed during the switch.
Regardless of the nature of the bug, there is a downside to this
little tidbit.  You cannot use the drive.  It is in a state of, of,
well of something which you cannot access a disk inside it during this
time.  Don't worry, power down and everything should be back to normal
at boot up.

As for flashing to a Plextor firmware.  Go ahead.  Try it.  Please.
Everyone else here (including me) is to nervous to try.  And frankly,
I suspect it would not work.  Some design (cost) considerations were
made by Creative to get the Plextor drive to work at a reasonable
price/markup.  In the process they chopped half the RAM buffer out,
from 4mb to 2mb.  A genuine Plextor firmware may be expecting 4mb to
be there and will subsequently be confused by the shortage of memory.
That factor alone makes me think it will not work correctly.  The
other question is "did Creative have Plextor install flashable ROM?"
This is a more troubling and as yet unanswered question.  If not, then
were are the BIOS updates for the drive, since Plextor has already
gone through 5 revisons of firmware.....