Now that I am home, I can check what I have used for firmware upgrades of DVD/CD burners under linux. For various NEC drives including my NEC 1300A, you can use binflash: http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ For plextor drives you can get a pointer to the PXUpdate program and updated firmware from: http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Hardware/Upgrade_Plextor_Firmware_with_UDEV_and_pxupdate_How_to