In my experience many early CD-ROM drives don't read burned media period. It has nothing to do with the quality of CD's, but rather the need of the drive to be only able to handle pressed media. I have several older drives that just plain refuse to read any burned discs, no matter what brand. I believe some drives (Sony comes to mind) actually used this as a prevention for pirated CD's.

I could improve compatibility with old cd drives by burning discs as slow as possible. I guess taking an older burner from a good brand (say some old plextor) could improve the compatibility even further

What I did back int he day with slow drives to get them to read CD-R and CD-RW discs was to adjust the output power of the laser.

There is generally a tiny variable resister that can be adjusted in order to increase the power of the laser. I'm not sure how it affects the life of the laser, but I didn't have a problem with it when I did it on a few drives.

I haven't had any problem with drives that old reading burned CD-R media (CD-RW requires MultiRead drives from 1999 or later), even very early drives from 1989-90 work fine with it. The problem is usually that the drive is failing after 20+ years and likely won't read any media at all pretty soon.

No, there are drives that are perfectly fine with normal discs but not burned ones. Like this old 4x drive of mine that reads any factory made discs but not CD-Rs.

Yes, I have several old 4x drives that only read genuine pressed CD's and no CD-R at all, no matter what speed you burn them.

I have several older CDROM units that will not read CD-Rs if they are written in DAO (disc-at-once) mode, but are perfectly happy with discs written in TAO (track-at-once) mode. Perhaps something to explore.

In DOS you are limited to 8.3 filename is a filename convention ( 88888888.333 ) otherwise DOS will not be able to read the CD and open folders.
Folders are limited to 8 characters.

In my experience many of the new CD-R's don't work in old drives. The older CD-R's tend to work depending on the brand. I've had great experience with Octron CD-R's in terms of reliability and compatibility. Especially the older ones (12x and 16x speed). Recently I even bought a pack of NOS 12x and 16x CD-R's and whether I burn them with my trusty old 2x Philips CDD3610 or with fancy new modern tech DVD burners; they work flawlessly in my Philips 5x CD-ROM drive. I haven't tested the newly bought CD-R's in my '92 single-speed Philips drive but I'm sure they will work even in that old drive 😀. I have a few Octron CD's I burned in the past (when they were new) and all of them still work.

I've tried various newer CD-R's but they never work in older drives. Of course, even in the 16x speed 'era', a lot of CD-R's don't work in older drives. I have a bunch of 3M Imation 8x and 16x CD-R's and they don't work in older drives.

As others said, burn as slow as possible.

Also try to keep files as small as possible. The 4X IBM branded drive that I use from time to time seems to be pretty reliable for the first 50-100 megs and then keeps failing after that.

Another thing to try...I recall once having trouble reading burned media on old computers unless the CD-R had at least ~20MB of data burned to it. I don't know WHY, but anything less than that and it seemed to not properly detect the disc. So, when burning stuff to a CD-R with the intent of using it on one of my vintage computers, I try to make sure there's at least 20MB of data on it, even if it means just adding in junk files to get the data size up. Granted, this could have been a peculiarity of the specific drive I was using at the time when I encountered this issue (We're talking 15+ years ago I experienced this oddity), so this may not apply in your specific case. Still, it's a habit I keep as a "just in case" matter, and it might be worth considering.

Otherwise, basically what everyone else said...burn as slow as possible, but keep in mind that no matter how you burn the disc or what type of disc is used, some old drives simply never have and never will be able to properly read burned media (The factory-original 8x CD-ROM drive in my old Compaq Presario 2200 springs to mind). It's basically down to luck of the draw whether the specific model you have will work with CD-R or not.

Cheap and modern CDR discs aren't really made to work with drives that don't explicitly support them. But quality discs can still work in such drives.
Gold "archival" discs (like the Verbatims you mentioned) are expensive, and I don't know if they're especially good in terms of readability. They're really meant for longevity - but maybe they also have good readability, I just don't know if those traits go together.
Unfortunately, I think it will be hard to know which discs will work best for you without trying them, and that might be an expensive experiment.

There's an old, long-produced series of Taiyo Yuden CDRs with the MID code of 97m24s01f . These have a good reputation for working with picky drives, and even old burners recognize them and have an optimized burn strategy for them. Over the years they have been produced with the same MID code but different advertised burning speeds, so I'm a little confused about that. I still haven't tried a modern (made in 2015) disc of this type in my older CDR drive, so I can't confirm 100% that the old drive's burn strategy is still compatible.
The Japanese plant that made them shut down at the end of 2015. The latter years of discs made in that plant were branded as "JVC Professional by Taiyo Yuden" or something like that.
From 2016 onward, CMC Magnetics now owns Taiyo Yuden. CMC still sells discs that claim to be a continuation of Taiyo Yuden. The CMC made discs aren't made in the old Japanese plant though. I have no idea if they are still as good as the Japan-made discs.
From looking on eBay, the current version of Taiyo Yuden discs still have similar looking branding as the JVC version did, but they have a "CMC" logo on them instead.
I don't know who the best suppliers are for Taiyo Yuden CDRs in Spain, but if you find a decent price for them they might be worth a try.

I've seen it argued occasionally that old drives might be happier with 650MB / 74minute CDRs instead of the 700MB / 80min discs that are nearly universal nowadays. I don't know if that actually matters much, and 650MB / 74min discs are rare now.

If you see CDRs at a thrift store, look through them. If any of them say made in Japan, they're probably very good discs and worth buying. If they have old speed grades but are in good condition, that also implies they're probably good quality discs. The quality of CDRs (and their compatibility with picky readers) declined as time went on. The discs got cheaper and drives got better at tolerating them.
Keep in mind that retail brand names like "Memorex" etc usually don't tell you who actually made the discs. But if they're older discs and/or made in Japan, then they're a lot more likely to be good quality.
The risk with buying old discs is that they go bad with exposure to heat, light, and moisture. So if they've been badly stored, they might not be any good. Weigh that against the price.

I've had success in my pickier drives (4X and 6X readers and an early 90s non-PC drive) with the above mentioned TYs and also Sony Supremas CDRs. But Sony Supremas is a retail name so they might vary. My Sony's have no speed markings on the discs, but are detected as 32X discs with the MID codes of 97m24s11f and another batch of 97m24s16f.

Your old drives might benefit from cleaning the lens.
There's a lot of old (and occasionally more recent) threads about optical disc quality and testing methods over on myce.com, which is the modern remains of the old cdfreaks.com forum.

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Is it clear that there is no correct answer, I have to test it myself and see which combination works best for me.

I will keep you posted 😉

system gets contaminated by dust in all places and thats the thing. The all drives need to be cleaned. So open all screws.
Mechanics should not wobble or have any contamination between the spindle holder.
Dust and other contamination at optics - the sensor array under lens gets dust inside, thats the trouble, however can be tried with compressed air for a moment). Thats the thing very difficult to get access in but there is a very very little chance to clean it.
The dust enters into the drive becouse the computer closed cases suck in the air from all possible micro holes and those are the drive ones too around buttons, (volume regulator!). Worse if it has a fan (PXW4220Ti).

First clean the lens with a soft painter brush (gently, couple times would suffice).
Next, the lens cleaning with 99.8% isopropanol with a wet cotton sponge. It makes sense however you do not see with a naked eye.

That should suffice at first and lets try with different discs, including some pressed audio discs (shorter than 60min). If not enough to read CD-R then the next steps:
Then the laser output adjustment. It has some tolerances, so you wont burn it up in first place. The safe enough is to turn it little bit -- first mark the position of origin with a marker then turn just a 10 degrees clockwise at first and then little bit more if needed as a last resort.

That way the old CD players are cured too (the Technics SL-PG 490 and 590 audio players with the following trickery succeeded to get the capability to play the CD-RW discs while they do not support officially. ).

From the Estonian History Archives archiving guidelines:

The CD burning at the lower speeds makes sense, but in a sense if it has its optics clean, suitable recording media.
(Otherwise the newer drive at 4x speed makes the better result than old contaminated drive at 1x speed!).
The high-speed drives which can handle CD-R recording with speeds 8x-40x, at the lowest speed as 8x might still go out of calibration, so it should be something between with those drives. While it does not hurt to check the CD-R is clean before recording (just like cleaning before CD-audio ripping).
After each CD-R writing let the drive to have couple minutes pause to cool.

The factory who really made the discs can be read out on the burnimg and cdrecord programs. Also it shows if it is a long or short strategy medium.

There is also option to use the drives which have the Audio Master option in their features, and to use such option when recording
data CD instead. Some drives support it. It result by using 10..15% larger gaps, (the 74min CD would last 68min, 80min CD will be as 72min and so on). thus improving signal-to-noise ration in laser pick-up optics.

Still to get best out of it, then to select the blank-CDs for best reflection ratio it really needs the oscilloscope hooked on the laser pick-up optics array signals to get some useful info what the drive is best suited in order to see how much sharp are the signals on the receiver... 😉

cyclone3d wrote:

What I did back int he day with slow drives to get them to read CD-R and CD-RW discs was to adjust the output power of the laser.

There is generally a tiny variable resister that can be adjusted in order to increase the power of the laser. I'm not sure how it affects the life of the laser, but I didn't have a problem with it when I did it on a few drives.

Yep, there's usually a trimpot right besides the laser diode to adjust the power. Increasing it will shorten the diode's lifetime, and you will probably overdo it if you just keep increasing without any other feedback until CDRs works. Wouldn't personally have done it to a drive I wanted to keep without an oscilloscope to view the output signal 😀