Nothing really special though, just a cd changer

Here's one with a card reader built-in.

Those golden Philips 4x burner drives have a different look. I have read many have problems with them but it served me well back in the day.

The Plextor 6plex and 8plex used a caddy and a swing down door look like these:

Top pic on OP is known as a slot load if you want to search for them. The NEC multispin, I own one with a SCSI interface, can't remember if it was completely non-functional, or just wasn't bootable on the controller I was using, which was a requirement when I was last playing with SCSI CD-ROMs.

Edit: Don't have a pic handy but there's some old, maybe only 1x and 2x drives, where the whole front and drive mechanism slides out.

like this one

Mitsumi CRMC-LUOO5S 1x CD-ROM

Can somebody identify the bottom model from first post, and the one with card reader?

weedeewee wrote on 2021-12-26, 18:32:

like this one https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/B7xue_23tN9JmLkdcCSrqnBSdM_MsLYz2wE9CLG338rlwVKjIdSskg8SqiArnEx7zY_NZnZ0OW […]
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like this one

Mitsumi CRMC-LUOO5S 1x CD-ROM

I can assure you, this didn't work the way you wanted, no one else can see this image.

If this is an image from Google Photos, you may want to follow my advice here: Re: Televideo Telewave Audio 32 sound card, questions about its onboard wavetable ROM

What's weird is that I could see the image earlier.... meant to say, "Yah that's it" but got distracted, now I come back and it won't load... was maybe on the other machine though, but that was still latest Chrome but 32bit not 64bit.

Edit: Oh maybe I had a google account logged in on that one, hmmm.

Think there were a couple of CD / floppy combo drives at one point - definitely one from TEAC; can't remember the other brand

Edit - found this pic, and drivers still available (AT interface only) on archive.org

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-12-27, 04:53:

Think there were a couple of CD / floppy combo drives at one point - definitely one from TEAC; can't remember the other brand

Just turned that one up in a Twitter post when I was looking for the floppy styled one... https://twitter.com/foone/status/1253034869975732224

Strange, on the other machine again, not logged into a chrome profile or into a google account but I can see the image weedeewee posted inline in the thread. I can't open it in a new window, or save it, but I did manage to copy it and paste it into a new file...

Stiletto wrote on 2021-12-27, 04:45:

weedeewee wrote on 2021-12-26, 18:32:

like this one https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/B7xue_23tN9JmLkdcCSrqnBSdM_MsLYz2wE9CLG338rlwVKjIdSskg8SqiArnEx7zY_NZnZ0OW […]
Show full quote

like this one

Mitsumi CRMC-LUOO5S 1x CD-ROM

I can assure you, this didn't work the way you wanted, no one else can see this image.

If this is an image from Google Photos, you may want to follow my advice here: Re: Televideo Telewave Audio 32 sound card, questions about its onboard wavetable ROM

actually, it's a link from google cache, since it seemed that the original website no longer exists.
and it also seemed to work for, as you said, only a moment. I'll see if I can fix it using the info you provided.
edit: can't seem to fix it since link is dead and google already updated its cache to point to the image now posted by bitwrangler.
So fixing it by pointing to bitwrangler's photo .

Bitwrangler, that same link is now dead for me. 🙁

I loved CD-ROMs with "play" buttons and volume control!

Niezgodka wrote on 2021-12-26, 19:50:

Can somebody identify the bottom model from first post, and the one with card reader?

Not had any luck with the one that looks like a floppy, nor the model of the one with the card reader, but I think Emprex is just a brand name used by BTC. The drive seems an earlier model from their Dual Digital Storage range - here's a later CD-RW / DVD ROM / card reader combo

Niezgodka wrote on 2021-12-26, 16:29:

Also, all standard cdroms are quite long (goes deep inside). Do you know any 5.25 drive models, that are as short as possible?

Smallest IDE drive I own is a GCE-8481B I think.

For SATA what your looking for are cheap late model OEM drives where cost was more important then quality.
The final years when optical drives came as standard are a safe bet as good chance the dive was never even used.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-12-29, 10:02:

Smallest IDE drive I own is a GCE-8481B I think. […]
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Niezgodka wrote on 2021-12-26, 16:29:

Also, all standard cdroms are quite long (goes deep inside). Do you know any 5.25 drive models, that are as short as possible?

Smallest IDE drive I own is a GCE-8481B I think.

For SATA what your looking for are cheap late model OEM drives where cost was more important then quality.
The final years when optical drives came as standard are a safe bet as good chance the dive was never even used.

One of the 16x DVD burners was shorter than average, I think it was the one that nobody on CDfreaks or similar sites liked because it was lacking the best features for piracy. A Hitachi model I'm thinking.