Hi Pebbly, yes I went there first before posting, I don't think I need firmware; when I connect the external burner via usb; system 7 loads it's drivers that specify "unknown device" in device manager. I have the disk that came with the burner but the system was not able to locate any drivers when searched. So that started my search and my post here....but now I just checked device manager and viola! it's working and is using "cdrom.sys" as the device driver. Don't know what happened between the time I posted and checking it today. Thanks anyway.