ehw
commented
9 months ago So this drive has been a curious one for us here. Because out of all the legit Plextor drives, this is the one where there are certain variations that cause dumping issues presumably depending on the components that were used during manufacturing.
When we were researching using Plextor drives to dump GD discs, we were sent a few 4824 drives and noticed that one drive could use the D8 command to read into the high density data, and one drive could not. The two drives were manufactured in the same month and year, same TLA, very close to the same serial number. We dumped the flash NAND from both, no difference aside from the unwritable area that has drive information. We confirmed with RibShark, that his 4824 did the same thing where his drive did not want to read into the high density data. The drives were on the same firmware and same motherboard, so we had ZERO idea what was causing the noticeable difference.
The difference lies in the drive's DSP (?) or main CPU.
Upon examination, we discovered that the drive with the main CPU (the bigger chip on the motherboard) that has "LC898095 VG2N.. 2JN6K" written on it, failed to read sectors in the high density with D8 (it would return "Failed Reading Sector" when trying). The drive that has "LC898095 VG2N.. 2JNAK", worked just fine like any other Plextor. We even went as far as to desolder the CPU from the working drive and stick it onto the motherboard of the nonworking one, and we were able to read the sectors.
So tl;dr there are noticeable functionality differences within the same model of drive that is caused by variance in the CPU that's used, and not any other component.
Whether or not this applies to CD-TEXT reading for multisession I'm not sure, but this drive is freaky and this is something to note that might explain why.
Reevaluate CD-TEXT reading for multisession, it's currently disabled because the call hangs for some discs.