I happen to be sitting in front of my storage bin of unused optical drives. I found 2 CDR/RW drives made in the 1990s. Both are from HP machines. I'll also include text on the labels that might show up in an eBay/etc search:
- HP C4410-56000 May 1999 "CD-Writer Plus 7500 series" "2X/2X/24X IDE CD-Recordable/ReWritable Drive" "Product Exchange HP C4410-60001/69001" - Don't know if I ever tested this. Color is beige with some blue on the eject button and nearby text.
Sony CRX100E September 1998 - "Hewlett Packard" "4X/2X/24X Max IDE CD-Recordable/ReWritable(CD-R/RW)" "Part Number:D4398-60021" "HP Revision B" - "Sony" "CD-R/RW DRIVE UNIT" "VERSION BC" "4-900-401-02" - This drive still worked last time I burned discs with it, but that was like 15 years ago. I do have a note on the drive saying it "Reads Poorly" so maybe mine is just dirty but this could also mean it's picky about disc quality. This version is gray, not beige, because the machine it came from is gray.
Now off on tangents:
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Most drives from the 1990s are going to be picky about disc quality, so most cheap modern CDR discs tend to be unreadable in them. On various drives where I've had that problem, they've been happy to read Taiyo Yuden J-CDR-WPP-SK discs that I bought in 2015 (their Japanese plant has since closed, new TY discs are made elsewhere). I have *not* tried burning them with an old drive though, I'm just talking about readability.
I've also had good luck with some semi-old Sony discs that I got at a thrift store. If you go in thrifts, check the blank CDRs for anything that looks promising. Anything that's labelled "Made in Japan" is probably made by a good OEM. Anything that's old (650MB or low burning speeds) is probably good quality also, assuming they weren't stored badly over the years.
Besides the issue of disc quality, there's a 2nd issue if you add "retro burning" into it.
Burners have a burn strategy/calibration in their firmware that responds to the ID code of the blank media. An old firmware won't recognize newer ID codes and will fall back on a generic strategy. This can cause much higher error rates in the burn (some software can scan for this). These are correctable errors (at read time) but of course the less you have, the better.
Taiyo Yuden was all about stability with their product line, and their customers ordered from them expecting everything to keep working consistently. So it's possible that they managed to make their newer discs compatible with older burn strategies (reusing the old ID codes), but I'm not sure.
I *think* that back when I ordered my 2015 TY discs, I had found some info that their ID code was supported by my Plextor PX-W 12/10/32S from ~2001. But I'm not sure on that memory and I've never tried burning them in it.
The old cdfreaks.com forum had lots of arcane knowledge about disc burning (and quality testing) from people who were obsessed with it. That forum is now branded as myce.com. I think the old forum threads are still buried there underneath all the modern nonsense. Probably easier to navigate using an external search "site:myce.com".
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Plextor didn't get many complaints, but I believe one reason is because they weren't exposed to the entire market.
Plextor didn't start making IDE/ATA drives until about 2000-01, after the "BurnProof" feature was added. In the years when ATA was more likely to produce coasters, Plextor didn't offer drives for that interface.
Their commitment to SCSI also meant they were typically used by more knowledgeable users and those who spent more on PC hardware and probably had a good setup.
All this probably helped their reputation independent of the quality of their drives (which was also certainly good).
My first CDR was a cheap Hi-Val on a cramped, overheating K6 system running Windows 9x that barely ever made any good discs. Plextor didn't have to worry about getting my business. 😀
When I bought a Plextor, I paired it with a 2nd-hand HP SCSI workstation at the opposite end of the spectrum in quality. You could use that PC for drum practice and I still doubt it would make a coaster.