I started to update the firmware on my PC's CDRW/DVD combo drive but it failed halfway through and rebooted the PC. Now the drive is no longer recognised in 'My Computer' although it gets seen in the bios.

I also had to go into the bios and turn off the secondary IDE controller as it was locking the PC up before windows with an error message :S

Now the drive just sits and blinks its LED furiously not even repsonding to the eject button.

Any ideas? Have I killed the drive?

Probably. You might be able to recover it. Ask the manufacturers of the drive to see if there is any recovery procedure.

I have an AOpen drive here that fails the upgrade, leaving the drive dead. The first two times this happened, I returned the drive for a new one. Now with the third drive, I have a sticky note on the front saying "do NOT attempt f/w upgrades!".

Some brands can be recovered regardless, but not AOpen. I used Google to find all sorts of links for this, including links to a recovery tool. But that was a year ago, and I no longer remember much more about it, other than that it exists and works for most brands of drives.

Cheers

I can't be bothered researching it!

Its on eBay