Gradius and NIL from forum.firmware-flash.com have worked together very hard to produce a firmware upgrade for the pioneer A03 enabling it to write to Traxdata at 2 speed. Click to go to download page.

This has been done by changing the media table to read the RITEK ID .....RITEKG..03. in place of the TDK ID .....TDKG02..000 this fools the drive into reading the Traxdata as 2x write. The down side of this is that the TDK media will then only write at single speed.

Fortunately this firmware is reversible so a change of media just requires the firmware to be re-flashed a couple of times. We all shudder at the thought of flashing the firmware but I have created dos boot discs to make this job easier.
These discs have been produced by me using the firmware from Gradius & NIL at forum.firmware-flash.com and have been done so with their permission.

They can be downloaded and run from within Windows to produce the required floppies. The zip file PioneerBootDiscs.zip contains 4 self creating boot disc images which are as follows

165_RPC1.exe Boot disc to change the firmware to version 1.65 Region Free this is needed to downgrade from 1.68 because the same version cannot be flashed over itself.

168TRX2X.exe Boot disc to change the firmware to version 1.68 Region Free and enable 2x writing on Traxdata media.

168_RPC1.exe Boot disc to change the firmware to version 1.68 Region Free with the standard 2x write media.

168_RPC2.exe Boot disc to change the firmware to version 1.68 with the original Pioneer firmware

So! How is the firmware flashed??
Some of the flashing can be done in windows but for simplicity the instructions here only refer to using the boot discs any other way of flashing can be learnt by reading various posts in the forums.

Downward flashing from 1.90 can only be done from a clean dos boot.

1) First boot up the PC with the 1.65 boot disc and flash to firmware 1.65.
2) Reboot with the 1.68 Traxdata 2x firmware boot disc to flash the patched firmware.
3) Boot up into windows and then write at 2x with the Traxdata discs.

To revert back
1) First boot up the PC with the 1.65 boot disc and flash to firmware 1.65
2) Reboot with the 1.68 RPC1 boot disc to flash the normal firmware.
3) Boot up into windows and then write at 2x on the original 2x media.

Gradius has flashed the 1.68 into various versions to enable 2X on other brands of media and he has also done the same with the A04 1.20 firmware

LATEST NEWS
The A03 2 speed firmware hack is now available for ALL DVD-R media. Gradius from forum.firmware-flash.com has done it again: he has hacked the firmware for the A03 to enable 2 speed writing to all media. This hack is very easy to apply just unzip the 2x4all_a03.exe into a single folder and run the executable UPGDVDx.exe to upgrade the firmware from within Windows.
This will work for all firmware versions up to 1.68
For firmware versions 1.80 & 1.90 the upgrade needs to be done in DOS and I have created the DOS boot disc image 2x4all_a03_BOOT.zip to make a DOS boot disc just unzip and run the executable 2x4all_a03.exe to make the disc.

I have tested this on my A03 and I am very happy with it. There are some promising results have a look at my test results on my MEDIA TEST PAGE as you can see by the results so far some of the media burns OK but the poor media produces poor results, but there is one consolation however I get to burn the coasters twice as fast.

BEWARE THAT FLASHING THE FIRMWARE WITH ONOFFICIAL VERSIONS INVALIDATES YOUR WARRENTY AND MAY DAMAGE YOUR WRITER

ALTHOUGH I HAVE GIVEN THIS PATCH EXTENSIVE TESTING AND FIND IT TO WORK FOR MY APPLICATIONS I CANNOT ACCEPT ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE YOU MAY DO TO YOUR EQUIPMENT BY WRONGLY APPLYING THIS FIRMWARE YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK

Thanks to Flash for this article.