Before starting, I have to thank Carlos for helpping me on this. Without him, I would have wasted one Philip slim DVD-RW.
I have successfully change the Master/Slave setting of the Philip SPD8005BM/17 DVD-RW using Carlos method.
Anyway, to change the Master/Slave option is not hard but needs some extra work. As Carlos stated in his article, the following steps should work:
1. Back up your Philip SPD8005BM/17 drive firmware using Flash Utility for LiteOn Based Optical Drives v 2.1.0 (
http://codeguys.rpc1.org/utilities.html).
2. Flash your Philip SPD8005BM/17 drive with Lite-On SSM-8515S GS08 firmware (
ftp://ftp.ca.pl/pub/caM158N_M158i/M158i_firmware) by executing GS08fix.exe. Your Philip SPD8005BM/17 will become a Lite-On SSM-8515S drive. You do not need to reboot at this point.
3. Update your Philip SPD8005BM/17 (but the system would think it's a Lite-On) with Lite-On SSM-8515S GS09 firmware (
http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/FIRMWARE/Lite-On/Lite-On-SSM-8515S-Firmware-S09.shtml) which can be obtained via Lite-On official website. The reason why we upgraded using the GS08fix first and then GS09 is because GS08fix does not check whether the target drive is Lite-On or not. If you use GS09 directly, it will refuse to upgrade by stating it is not a Lite-On product.
4. Now, reboot and use EEPROM Utility for LiteOn/Sony/BenQ Drives 3.7.2 (
http://codeguys.rpc1.org/utilities.html) to back up your current EEPROM setting just for safety. Please note that your drive will not be working right now, but your goal is just to change the Master/Slave setting.
5. You can go ahead and use the EEPROM Utility to change the drive's Master/Slave setting. Please be sure about the right Master/Slave setting, because if you changed it to a wrong setting and caused your BIOS not able to recognize the drive, you will need to find a laptop that can accept your current Master/Slave setting and perform the setting change again.
6. You can flash your Philip SPD8005BM/17 back using the original firmware (the one you backed up in the first step) using Flash Utility for LiteOn Based Optical Drives v 2.1.0 (note: not the EEPROM flash, but firmware flash).
7. Reboot and the Master/Slave setting of your Philip drive is now set. Your drive should be working as a Philip SPD8005BM/17 again.
Please note that the Slim Master/Slave function of EEPROM Utility does not work under Windows Vista. You need to do this on a Windows XP system.
I acutally created two jumper setting EEPROM copies of Philip SPD8005BM/17 (contains Master.bin and Slave.bin, just pick one and flash it). You can get it
here (please read the instructions and use at your risk).
However, merely changing the Master/Slave setting does not make the drive functional on my Toshiba notebook. I have the whole story here:
Replacing Toshiba Satellite R15 Slim SelectBay DVD.