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scsi_wuzzy wrote:the FW 3.02 on my BW-16D1HT (the one recommended by the Wiki). Sarami is using 3.10. It seems unlikely this explains the different behavior, right? I feel it's more likely the disc, but we are running different FW revisions

I don't know, if you know, but it's now possible to go from 3.02 to 3.10 and back safely - before it was very hard (and risky) to downgrade as the downgrade is not allowed with those drives, because of their UHD/BD support - it requires manual patching of the firmware and easy to brick the drive. So, the new way for downgrade is a lot like PS3 downgrade, if you're familiar with PS3 HFW (Hybrid Firmware) downgrade procedure. It has additional advantage that contrary to the previous methods, this one keeps the individual calibration data of your particular drive - it's done entirely in software. So, from your 3.02 you can update to 3.10, then to go back, you need to flash it to another firmware 3.10DE, i.e. 3.10 Downgrade-Enabled firmware and then flash it to 3.02. I can give you better details, but I did it over few months ago and I am searching for my notes - I recall write down small txt file for myself...

[EDIT] I cannot find the notes I had in mind, but found another notes that say:

1. Update BW-16D1HT FW3.02 to 3.10 using the official updater
2. then if you what to go back to 3.02
2.1. use "ASUS_ODD_FW_Changer_(Modified) (24.08.2019)" and update with file "ASUS-BW-16D1HT-3.10-WM01601-211901041014.bin", that enables 3.10 drive to be downgraded
2.2. use again "ASUS_ODD_FW_Changer_(Modified) (24.08.2019)" with "DE_ASUS_BW-16D1HT_3.02.bin" to update it

I am giving those just as clues, maybe there are now newer vesions of the above files and they are no longer the latest.

[EDIT2] I found the note I made to myself 4 months ago, literally it says:

3.10 can be flashed to 3.10MK for downgrade
3.10MK can be flashed with any DE firmware.

So, it seems it works a little like PS3 HFW:

OFW --> HFW
HFW --> Downgrade

In my maybe:

3.10 --> 3.10MK
3.10MK --> 3.02DE

Also, that note is my "ASUS_ODD_FW_Changer_(Modified) (24.08.2019)" and so that tool was used. I think "MK" comes from Mike the guy that make 3.10 downgrade firmware and "DE" is stands for Downgrade-Enabler or something like that...So, yeah, it seems the files in my other note match perfectly this one.

scsi_wuzzy wrote:I'm just realized I'm using the FW 3.02 on my BW-16D1HT (the one recommended by the Wiki). Sarami is using 3.10. It seems unlikely this explains the different behavior, right?

Rune and Tropico is a negative offset disc. BW-16D1HT (FW 3.10) can dump it.
FW 3.02 uses to dump a positive offset disc. (Of course, it's also able to use for a negative offset.)

matura713 wrote:Also, that note is my "ASUS_ODD_FW_Changer_(Modified) (24.08.2019)" and so that tool was used. I think "MK" comes from Mike the guy that make 3.10 downgrade firmware and "DE" is stands for Downgrade-Enabler or something like that...So, yeah, it seems the files in my other note match perfectly this one.

There's also the flashing tool that comes with MakeMKV as well. I've only used it for a couple of tasks, but it's worked well. Okay, I actually was lazy and used the GUI tool (sdftool_flasher). In any case, it's worked well for me. I haven't tried flashing an ASUS firmware with it, though, but I'm thinking I might upgrade my ripper to 3.10 just for the hell of it.

Edit: Just upgraded to 3.10 MK via sftool_flasher. Looks like it went fine -- even with me being too lazy to take it out of the USB enclosure it's in.

Edit2: My Tropico disc still has an absolute ton of C2 errors around the region in question, so I don't think this is something that is just a difference between 3.02 and 3.10 firmware versions. Hopefully it won't be too long before my Tropico disc arrives and I can test my setup.

My European copy of Tropico arrived today. I was able to use DIC to dump the disc with my BW-16D1HT (F/W 3.10) and match the European release in the database.

Consequently, I don't believe there're any issues with my setup. I believe this US release is just a lot trickier to dump compared to the EU release. After trying however many drives I've tried, I'm reasonably confident that probably no drive will have fewer than 1516 errors when reading the US disc. That's the best I've seen from any drive, and that's exactly two errors for each location where there EU release has a single error. I've only found one drive capable of reading the disc with that few of errors -- most drives have 3+ (and often 5 or more) errors at each location.

Edit: Also, using CloneCD, my Optiarc 7290H5 and hp TS-H653R, two drives that I previously tried to dump the US disc with, are both able to create dumps of the EU disc that match the one in the database.