I have two of these drives. Initially worked great, but wouldn't recognise 16x-R disc. Found we could crossflash to a DRU-710A and fixed that, now able to burn at 12x too. Worked great til dad tried to use a memorex 16x-R in one of them about a year ago. Now it can't break 1.8x. I loaned him drive (identical to his.) Was working swell, then he stuck one of those damn memorex disc in. Now mine is having the same speed limit no matter what we stick in it. Tried flashing several different firmwares. Still haven't over come the problem. I read another post where the firmware fix worked the 1st time around for someone. When it happened again, they couldn't get it to reflash cause it was already updated to that version. I'm trying various crossflash variations, but so far, the only tangible change I have made is to make the computer see the drive as a different model and some firmwares will make the LED blink red during write mode. A little help? This is of course a re-badged Lite-ON SOHW-1633s I do believe and I do have two of them. DON'T PUT MEMOREX MEDIA IN THEM!
Finally did get it figured out, silly me. Turns out one of my controllers dropped out of UDMA mode. Got the turned back on, everything is good again, but firmwares did help with stability I was having.
Nice one on solving the problem yourself. I take it the old topic you're referring to was this one ~ http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/312424 Good to see that old topic still being of use
Well, I had used that thread in the past, actually shortly before the first drive malfunctioned. The one mine refers to has nearly the same title. As a newbie I wasn't authorized to post to it due to it's age.