Why don't you get a standard DVD burner? They're cheap and totally compatible. IMHO when it comes to storage, using old hardware isn't the way to go.

^ true that. I use LG dvd-roms even on 386 builds, never failed me and they work fine with generic drivers.

Well.....if anyone can write a "MAKE ANNOYING MITSUMI 4X CDROM NOISES" patch for DOSBox or PCem.... i'll stop using mine 😀

Don't want a hairdryer in a machine used for old DOS games...

I complain here a lot about my old 2X Sony CDU-33A with proprietary Sony interface. Not only was it a pain in the ass to get working with drivers, it made incredibly annoying sounds because rather than having an LED indicator light it had a two toned sliding transparent plastic indicator with some kind of actuator to move it from side to side. It's almost more annoying than the hair dryer sound of the CLV drives.

Unless I'm confusing it with the CDU-31A, I recall the drive having a constantly green power LED that alternated to an orange activity light. Never had a problem with drivers for them, even worked in Windows NT 3.1 without a problem. It was a step above my old "pull out" style Mitsumi drive in that it had software eject.

The tray just popped open when you ejected a disk, you have to pull it the rest of the way open and manually push the tray in to close it. No motorized loading which I found odd for Sony given their experience with making tray loaded CD Players. For CD-ROMs, it was either the caddy or that popping tray with them in the early days.

bjt wrote:

Don't want a hairdryer in a machine used for old DOS games...

http://cdbq.dosforum.de/

you're welcome.

I have found the OEM optical drives from 1999-2002 era to be good to hang on too, they come in white or off-white, and are generally quiet and work with every system. My suggest is to go find some junk PC in the trash or thrift/recycling center and harvest it's optical drive(s).

I use a NEC 4 speed in one of my machines and it's been the best 4 speed I've come across - reads burnt CD's and is totally quiet. It looks like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEC-4X-CD-ROM-Interna … =item564dbe85f9

I keep quite a few old SCSI CDROM drivers and burners around for my vintage gear. I kind of like using original Panasonic or Sony interface drives on the old gear. It feels kind of weird using something modern with a 486 machine. I regret not buying the old Plextor 4x drives in bulk when they were being liquidated, or snagging a few extra Creative badged CDROM drives from the recycler. Tons of companies making optical drives (most of the best ones) have gone out of business.

I used to want a 12x, since they were still CLV (pretty quiet), but CDBQ posted by Keropi above lets you make quiet drives out of almost anything anyway. There is also a TEAC DOS IDE CDROM driver that has a speed feature.

The CDU-31A is a 1X drive, and the CDU-33A is a 2X drive. I guess they look identical.

Thanks for reminding me about the shitty spring loaded door. To this day it's still the only drive I've ever seen that used a spring rather than motorized gears.

My driver problems were mostly related to OS/2 2.0 and 3.0. I don't believe I was ever successful getting the drive going. I ended up having to do a floppy install, which is at least 30 disks. It also didn't seem to work with the 9X bootdisks out of the box.

I'm not sure if there were any mechanical differences between the 1X and 2X models, but I would decribe the indicator on the CDU 33A as being pretty noisy.

I've never used the popout mitsumi drive, but I always thought they looked pretty neat. I guess all proprietary interface drives are to be avoided though.

One of those Sony pop-out drives is in a Gateway2000 486 DX2/50 I have (non functional even after being re capped).

That NEC drive looks good, I'll have to keep an eye out for one. I do have a CDU-33A but it's a pile of crap too and won't read CD-Rs.

If you are averted by high level of noise, try finding fast yet quiet drives. I got myself a Plextor PX-130A DVD-ROM drive very cheap. It reads CD-R and CD-RW and I can't hear any noise.

The other drive I use, and have in 2 retro machines, is this 52X Sony:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-CDU5211-52x-Inte … e-/110900791339

It looks good and is pretty quiet for a 52X, plus... it's a Sony.

bjt wrote:

Don't want a hairdryer in a machine used for old DOS games...

That is no excuse 😀

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov86vQ2tY9I

Man, you've got a video for everything!

badmojo wrote:

Man, you've got a video for everything!

Getting there 😜

I thought why not make a video for the important topics. Then I can just link them and be done with typing.