I've got a plastic bin full of the things of various makes/models/types/speeds. The 8x in the 286s parallel port works fine still. The 4x Creative Labs one on my 486DX2/66 OS/2 v3 Warp rig still works fine as well. I really don't have too much bother with them.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-01-20, 18:02:

I've got a plastic bin full of the things of various makes/models/types/speeds. The 8x in the 286s parallel port works fine still. The 4x Creative Labs one on my 486DX2/66 OS/2 v3 Wark rig still works fine as well. I really don't have too much bother with them.

Yeah, as mentioned, the oldest drives seem to be holding up. Later drives (I'd say 16x and faster?) seem to be dropping like flies. For old games the slower drives can actually be better since they don't have to spin up so much every time the disk is read (this makes a long delay), but for the situations where you simply need an optical drive to fill a space in a computer and allow you to use CDs from time to time, looking for expensive old drives from the early to mid 90s is a bit of a pain. The later drives are much more common... but whether they work anymore is another thing entirely.

What tends to die first with drives? The mechanical stuff or the laser bits?

Out of the 4 or so I have on hand atm, only 2 bit the dust. 1 was from a Compaq Socket 5 machine and never worked in the first place when I got It, and the other was a cheepo 40x liteon drive that died a few months in. Sounded like a jet engine when it was at full speed too. My daily driver, a 16x speed drive pulled outa a MMX era Compaq Presario has been fine ever since. Reads burned discs perfectly too.

Atleast with computers you can still easily get replacements. CD based consoles on the otherhand, I'd be much more concerned about.

I found using DVD drives a good thing because they can access CD-R and CD-RW CDs. Some manufacturers supply black and beige front covers with them.

Main things are lasers wearing out, the rubber belts stretching out and lubricant gumming up. Last two cause the trays not to come open. First one will cause progressively worse read performance to a point many discs stop working. Replacement of the laser mechanism is possible but drives cost less than new mechs.

I have had great results with a year 2004 CD burner LG GCE-8526B, it always produced discs that even oldest hardware could read and so far has had no difficulties with any CD I have thrown at it.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2021-01-20, 18:22:

What tends to die first with drives? The mechanical stuff or the laser bits?

I'd vote for the laser bits. I have a couple of CD drives that mechanically seems fine, but don't read any discs I have and also some DVD combo drives which refuse to read any CDs, but have no issue with DVDs.

I've been using cheap Lite-On, Samsung, LG, and so on DVD-RW drives for awhile now in my desktops. I used to swipe them at thrift shops.

Oddly some of those are starting to fail, however, yet the 30 year old 2x NEC CD-ROM Drives in my 286 (SCSI) and Versa Dock (IDE) are still working like brand spanking new and even read burned CD's....oh and I almost forgot the 4X that was in the Ready 9522 LPX Tower I have was the only one that failed. I think it has a ASUS 48x CD-RW burner in it now.

However, I'm making slow moves towards not using any CD drives at all and using SHSUCDX and ISO Files for everything these days. It'll just free up yet another drive bay I can use for other things, and means I don't need to haul CD's with my Laptops when I travel.

2x and 4x drives were plagued with bad capacitors thats why there are not many around especially the Sony.
The capacitor leaked onto the PCB and ate way the traces and solder joints so many capacitors just fell off.

For a 386/486 I would look for a 32x thru 52x CDROM drive. Forget about period correctness when it comes to CDROM drives.
You want function and performance.

The DVD drives require a Pentium CPU.

I always open up old CDROM drives that inspect and clean them before using them. Blow out and dust and partials
Check for broken parts, inspect moving mechanisms, clean lens with solution and soft cloth.

I have found coins and other stuff inside CDROM drives before.

But thats as far as I will go.

If something is bad with the PCB or electronics I will just use the drive for parts.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-01-20, 20:24:

2x and 4x drives were plagued with bad capacitors thats why there are not many around especially the Sony. The capacitor leaked […]
Show full quote

2x and 4x drives were plagued with bad capacitors thats why there are not many around especially the Sony.
The capacitor leaked onto the PCB and ate way the traces and solder joints so many capacitors just fell off.

For a 386/486 I would look for a 32x thru 52x CDROM drive. Forget about period correctness when it comes to CDROM drives.
You want function and performance.

The DVD drives require a Pentium CPU.

I always open up old CDROM drives that inspect and clean them before using them. Blow out and dust and partials
Check for broken parts, inspect moving mechanisms, clean lens with solution and soft cloth.

I have found coins and other stuff inside CDROM drives before.

But thats as far as I will go.

If something is bad with the PCB or electronics I will just use the drive for parts.

Funny you should mention it... Tonight I was trying to repair my 4x sony drive to fit into my dell 486. Looks fine inside but really struggles to read disks. Might have to write it off which is a shame.

I replaced it with a DVD drive as its my best colour match and also square enough to look period correct.... It works fine..

LewisRaz wrote on 2021-01-20, 20:36:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-01-20, 20:24:

2x and 4x drives were plagued with bad capacitors thats why there are not many around especially the Sony. The capacitor leaked […]
Show full quote

2x and 4x drives were plagued with bad capacitors thats why there are not many around especially the Sony.
The capacitor leaked onto the PCB and ate way the traces and solder joints so many capacitors just fell off.

For a 386/486 I would look for a 32x thru 52x CDROM drive. Forget about period correctness when it comes to CDROM drives.
You want function and performance.

The DVD drives require a Pentium CPU.

I always open up old CDROM drives that inspect and clean them before using them. Blow out and dust and partials
Check for broken parts, inspect moving mechanisms, clean lens with solution and soft cloth.

I have found coins and other stuff inside CDROM drives before.

But thats as far as I will go.

If something is bad with the PCB or electronics I will just use the drive for parts.

Funny you should mention it... Tonight I was trying to repair my 4x sony drive to fit into my dell 486. Looks fine inside but really struggles to read disks. Might have to write it off which is a shame.

I replaced it with a DVD drive as its my best colour match and also square enough to look period correct.... It works fine..

Yes, For a 386/486 PC I would not buy a CDROM drive slower that 32x. They are just to old and plagued with manufacturing problems.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-01-20, 20:24:

2x and 4x drives were plagued with bad capacitors thats why there are not many around especially the Sony. The capacitor leaked […]
Show full quote

2x and 4x drives were plagued with bad capacitors thats why there are not many around especially the Sony.
The capacitor leaked onto the PCB and ate way the traces and solder joints so many capacitors just fell off.

For a 386/486 I would look for a 32x thru 52x CDROM drive. Forget about period correctness when it comes to CDROM drives.
You want function and performance.

The DVD drives require a Pentium CPU.

I always open up old CDROM drives that inspect and clean them before using them. Blow out and dust and partials
Check for broken parts, inspect moving mechanisms, clean lens with solution and soft cloth.

I have found coins and other stuff inside CDROM drives before.

But thats as far as I will go.

If something is bad with the PCB or electronics I will just use the drive for parts.

I must have some from a good batch.

I'll argue till the cows come home about the requiring a Pentium for a DVD-RW drive in any of these systems (the "It Needs a Pentium" thing kind of triggers me, I spent most of the 2000's fighting it and winning on many levels). The reason they might need a "Pentium" is for playing DVDs (I have burned CD's with my drive on my 486 desktop - it works). Even then, you need at least a PEntium II to play DVD's without an MPEG Decoder card. That's something I've toyed with testing if the research allows - get an ISA MPEG decoder card (They exist - just hard to get) and use it with the DVD-RW on my 486 and see how terrible it'll be if it even works. I love crazy experiments like this.

Something new I learned about drive speeds using newer drives on old computers of all types is having a high-speed VLB controller on a 486 like the PTI-255W you can pretty much attach anything ot it. I"ve put brand new SATA SSD on it with a SATA to IDE controller (Kingston), I"ve put a 128GB mSATA SSD on there at full capacity running FreeDOS, I've been running a 48X DVD-RW drive on there. It might not apply to all controllers but the PTI-255W, which is WD based, puts up with anything. I'm thinking about buying a few SATA DVD-RW drives and trying those out with SATA to PATA adapters.

By contrast, NONE of my NEC versa could work with that mSATA drive in a 44pin carrier adapter. It was either not found by the DDO, or reported as an 8GB HDD. Funny since they do LOVE those Seagate Momentous ATA-133 80GB drives I put in them....part of how I"m getting higher than stock battery life actually. The Versas worked great in the Dock with the DVD-RW drive, I ripped ALL of the games I had to ISO with that drive, though it took a few ejects to get it to work as my 11 year old DVD-ROM is terrible - 7th Guest, all four CD's of Under a Killing Moon, Lighthouse......and I had those ripped discs ripped in 15 minutes or less - on a 486 DX4-75 no less - on a Dock I suspect might have an 8-bit IDE controller - crazy.

The reason they advertise it requires a Pentium on those old boxes is to save on support calls from people who bought the drive and tried to slap it in their 386 and try to play a DVD movie on it. Sure, it might work under DOS for reading, writing, maybe even burning Discs with the right free tool, but it's never going to play a DVD on anything below a Pentium II, at least not without extra not-provided hardware. Us here - were another breed. If those min system requirements stickers were "laws" I'd be a convicted felon for all the 486's out there I've rebuilt with DVD-RW drives in them.

@Creepingnet the DVD drive I have fit into my dx2 66 works just fine... Just installed windows95 with it.

Well, I am just going by the DVD manufactures requirements which is a Pentium based computer.

I hate high speed optical drives. I certainly wouldn't use one in a DOS/Win9x machine if I could help it.
I don't have model numbers handy, but my favorite CD drives are a couple 4X drives and a Compaq 6X that I got from an old server. They're responsive and reliable.
Due to when they were made, I think they might be picky about CDR quality but I use good CDs so that's not a problem.

The failure I've seen the most on newer drives is that the tray gets stuck. I've had a few drives that I had to pry with a screwdriver to get them to open.

I don't like drives that need to spin up every time I use it, like we're spooling up the oversized turbos for a drag race. In the time it takes these drives to "stage", a Civic can just drive the 20 feet that is required and be done.
This highly annoying behavior happens every time you display a directory listing or open a text file.
Aesthetically, the vibration and noise of high speed drives makes a nice computer seem janky.

Some drives can be slowed down with software, but I don't know if they can be configured to stop spinning down so that their lag problem is fixed. A newer drive that can be made to truly act just like an older ~4X model or whatever would be interesting.

I have a pair of identical Plextor SCSI 12X/32X CD-RW drives. The model on them is PX-W121032S I believe. They're from the high speed era so they wouldn't be my choice for DOS/Win9x, but they're probably well made and reliable. Both of them are still working anyway and they weren't cheap when new.
I don't really believe in that phrase "you get what you pay for" - but when comparing drives that cost $30 against drives that cost $300, there's probably going to be a difference in build quality.

I guess it makes me a feel a little better seeing other people with the same issues. I have like a 50% rate on receiving CDROM drives which properly work, and about the same with trying to fix them.

Seems like the biggest problem for me is the mechanical mechanisms weaken over time and can't overcome the force of the 'captive magnet' or whatever its called (you know, the part that holds the disc via the centered hole), and refuse to eject without a disc inside.

Sometimes this can be fixed by fashioning some sort of spacer but it depends on the design.

Otherwise broken plastic bits can sometimes be fixed with superglue or whatever you want. However I had a drive with a small gear with had a hairline crack in it, which would marginally separate when force was applied via another gear, resulting in bad sounds and wonky tray behavior because the teeth weren't meshing nicely. The fractured gear was WAY too small to superglue and I couldn't find a suitable replacement. Oh well.