First post, by hwh
So, my computer, the one I use for everything, is in a beige case. I'm not really a black guy. So life is tough. Anyway, getting to point, I want a drive that can read DVD-RAM with a beige bezel. Now such drives were made, all kinds of them. Some packages in the last decade had multiple bezels, those being black, beige, and silver.
Well, the world being what it is that usually meant people put the black bezel in and threw out everything else so when they go to sell their old drive on eBay (not that I am looking for an old drive, it just has to have the above criteria) of course it only has the black bezel.
There is even such a thing as a blu-ray drive which shipped with an optional beige bezel, however 1. No one used it, 2. The only one for sale is $250 (original price: $1000) and 3. It's some random old bleeding edge product that is probably much worse than the drive you get for $25 at newegg.
A few examples follow:
LG GSA-4082B
Sony ND-4570A
Sony AD-7170S?
Sony AD-7173A (06)
LG GSA-H42L (07) "quiet"
Pioneer DVR-112
Samsung SH182 (ATA)/SH183
So basically, a lot of stuff, not bare drive, had the option of beige bezels. Now it's like unobtanium to get one of the damn things. I haven't seen a single example besides vague indications that the Samsung SH224DB (a product Samsung helpfully fails to mention on its crappy, sprawling site, just try finding the optical drives category on their site) includes all three color bezels, which I can buy new. It doesn't really help that many optical drives are produced in barely different versions over the years so at first a beige bezel may have been standard but later the Black Tide came and washed over everything, leaving only black computer perpherals in its wake.
I see a couple of different LGs on eBay. They are ATA, annoyingly. SATA preferred here.