So I got a new TSST SH-D163B drive that came with firmware SB02. I have tried flashing it to Kreon 1.00, which is based on SB01, but the sfdnwin tool keeps coming back stating the "Download Fail!" for the flash, however, after rebooting, the drive is flashed with Kreon 1.00 (SB01) as I am currently ripping one of my games using Schtrom 4.0 under Vista 64. Should I be worried that there is something up with my drive, or can I ignore this error? I'm thinking that the hardware/software revision is somewhat new for the Kreon and maybe that's why it's erroring out by going to the older firmware. Flashing to the original SB02 from Samsung works fine, no errors there. Maybe it's time Kreon releases an updated firmware based on SB02 for newer hardware revisions of this drive? This one definitely looks different than my older SH-D163B which croaked on me a while back.

I tried on my other PC and still no go, the drive actually didn't like to be flashed to original SB01 even. So I'm guessing the new drives are somehow 'locked' to not be flashed to an older firmware. Seems to be fairly important that someone updates Kreon's firmware to use SB02 instead. What happens when there are no more SB01 drives out there?

I've just ordered the same drive. Am I in for the same problems?

Not necessarily, depends on the revision you get probably.