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.
using the liteon firmware has left my drive unusable, it shows up but the light stays on permanently and won't read any disks. Any help would be great!