Our regular contributor Flash has sent us great news of a new and improved Pioneer flasher. The DVD guru says, "Following the success of the flashing of the OEM Pioneer 106 drives made by ASUS, ACER & TEAC I am pleased to be part of the testing team from The Firmware Forum of the Universal Pioneer Flashing Tool. The tool developed by Agent Smith will flash all Pioneer A05/105 & A06/106 to any firmware of your choice." Click for more details before you download it from our download section.

Flash continues: "I have successfully tested this tool on the ASUS, ACER, MEMOREX & NECCI variants and the flashing was faultless using the same set of files with each drive thus eliminating the need for custom tools for each variant.

The tool developed by Agent Smith will flash all Pioneer A05/105 & A06/106 to any firmware of your choice.

It does not mean you can flash from the A05 to the A06.

Be warned that it may not be possible to flash your drive back to the OEM firmware because the firmware consists of two parts: the KERNEL and the NORMA. These both have to match up with the OEM mark or there will be serious problems in the drives operation. An upgrade of firmware usually only involves the NORMAL unless there is a major upgrade so the KERNEL is not usually included when there is an upgrade.

Changing the drives firmware from the OEM to PIONEER involves flashing the KERNEL as well as the NORMAL parts so that both parts of the firmware match. Now to revert back to the OEM firmware the KERNEL and NORMAL parts are both required to successfully flash the drive.

The OEM's do not release the firmware as regularly as for branded Pioneer ones and the KERNEL part is only included in revisions when it has been changed. Without the KERNEL and NORMAL for the OEM it is not possible to successfully flash back to the OEM.

The tool works within Windows from the command line and the options have to be set for the Drive letter and Firmware and I have compiled the correct files for the Pioneer 106 variants to flash with >NIL:’s firmware

This file is set to the default drive G:

Make sure you READ THE INSTRUCTIONS before flashing to find out how to set the drive letter."

Cheers Flash, nice one. Any comments please send them to flash@dvd-recordable.net.