Sorry for the double post but Slax 2 detects this drive, I forgot to paste relevant dmesg:
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ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0xC407
NO HL detected: ISATA  DVD-ROM    6243l
 Vendor: SATA  Model: DVD-ROM  Rev: 6243
 Type:  CD-ROM    ANSI SCSI revision: 05
st: Version 20050830, fixed bufsize 32760, s/g segs 256
sr0: scsi-1 drive
sr 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
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Doubt this is helpful other than maybe the message about status code 127.

Has anyone come up with a software-only method for dumping the firmware for this drive? I can find datasheets for the EliteMT (as others have already pointed out also) but not for the Mediatek chip (MT1359SE 0639-AUBL GZC21091) ( http://www.serverbeacon.com/ss/vad6038_under/vad6038_under%20002.jpg ). I haven't tried any hardware methods, so I don't know if there are other caveats involved. Any information on either form of dumping this firmware would be appreciated as I'd like to take a look at the firmware to compare against other drive firmware.

I might be way behind the 8ball on this one, but this is the only thread I've been following on the vad6038 drives and haven't seen much talk lately.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if you flashed to 4.2... don't you need to insert the 0800 disc to disable the firmguard (to be able to reflash)?

Probably has something to do with the Vision Cam shipping today (9/19).

Don't buy the games and flash back to the original backed up firmware.

BTW load times with 3.1 for me seem similar if not slightly longer than 3.0, but my Madden 07 and Fight Night 3 backups seem to play about as smooth as my originals in-game (where both had some annoying chop on the backups). Take this with a grain of salt, though, I've only tested for about 10 minutes.

c4e has stated that he believes it is extremely difficult if not impossible to read the samsung firmware from the 360 host (which I'm guessing means he thinks the CRC selfcheck is enough and that there are no plans ATM of xtreme40/stealth firmware for samsugn). Others have pointed out that you can only upload and execute code on the hitachi drive, as well as c4e stating that stealth firmware on the samsung is beyond something that could be implemented in the firmware itself.

That being said, is there anyone that could chime in on the technical differences between hitachi/samsung drives that led to someone creating stealth firmware for hitachi and if a similar approach could be taken for the samsung (even if not necessary)?