I'm the guy who asked about the Pioneer 109 tonight. I did a little checking on their site. Looks as though the firmware is up to date (the revision number is the same as reported by cdrecord). Although the date of the update is the day I bought the drive... Checking the FAQ it seems I may need an 80 pin cable (blue connectors) and I only have 40 pin cables (black connectors) in my machine. I tried 24X and K3B said either the drive or media couldn't handle that speed so it dropped back to 4X. The drive is rated for 40X and the media is rated for 48X. The next attempt is going to be 16X (which is what I was getting from the previous DVD burner). The read/verify is lightning quick though. cdrecord reports things the way they should be. I checked some configuration files and they confirmed what the DVD drive was. I haven't tried playing anything from it yet... Any thing I might have missed? I'll probably try the update in a day or so.

Later Mike