Chances are, you might not find a modern drive for sale that goes lower than 10x and as was said, the write speed isn't that critical. You reduce the chance for skips with low speeds, but you're simply getting CD-Rs that don't work at all... Your drive is most likely not the problem. Try burning with my ImgBurn before dismissing the drive.
It goes like this: The lowest speed the CD-R and drive support is ideal. Using max speed is a bad idea. That's the principle. It's not locked in to 4x, 8x, 10x, etc. It's getting paranoid to go off and say try to find old drives that can burn as low as 1x or 2x, etc.
Hi. Thanks for your input. However, I never said I was getting CD-Rs that don't work at all. I'll try to burn a few at 10X and see how they work. I was just hoping to burn at 8X since that's what was recommended to me, and I figured it could reduce the likelihood of having problems while playing the game.
I see, so you were in search of a solution for a problem that had yet to manifest itself because of a word-of-mouth developed firm belief that 8x was a magic burning speed and you hadn't even tested a burn from this new drive because it didn't allow anything below 10x...
Well, again, it's not that critical and the difference between 8x to 10x isn't huge. What you wanna pay attention to is skipping/stopping on an audio track such as background music. If the game loads, you've got a working burn and if the background music never skips, then stops, there is no problem, it is compatible with the CD-R.
* If a good CD-R burn doesn't work at all, but it works with an emulator, then your CD laser would need tuning or possible replacement.
* If you do get skips on real CD-ROMS, or CD-Rs, even then, the first thing to try is relubrication of the laser's sliding poles, that usually fixes that problem.
* If CDROMs work perfectly, but CD-Rs randomly misread while music is playing and it stops, the game goes on with no sound, that's where a good CD-R brand and slow burn might make a difference.
Anyhow, yeah, try it out first before feeling you must replace this drive because it can't burn slightly slower... You been led into being excessively cautious about this if you believe you really must find a drive that can burn a bit slower without even having tested anything from the drive you just bought.