I would look for an IDE cdrom up to about 16x, reason: during the 90's specially 95-96 cdroms advanced quickly from 6x to 12x is a single year. 16x came out early 1997. (source: cdrom evolution timeline - what speed cdroms were introduced /w dates)
Yes some of the LG BR/DVD/CD burners can do overburn, or at least the wh12ls30 and wh16ns40 series I have can if I use Nero to do the over burning IF the media supports it. Think all the LG WH12/wh14/wh16 series can but not the UH12 3d series AFAIK
And they come in Black and are SATA. About $80 new.

Seems like the LG WH16NS40 would be a great choice for my daily computer and it seems it can do CDR99. And even though I don't need it now, Blue Ray isn't a bad thing to have if you need huge storage. Thank you.

What would you recommend for the old one? I acknowledge your reasoning but for me, the lower the better. 4x, 6x, 8x would be nice to have if any choice models come to mind?

Mitsumi and Toshiba are good, and also Creative branded or if you can find one a Plextor but they get very expensive !!!

Don't those all require proprietary interfaces? My SB16 has an IDE header only.

They will be ide, I think the Mitsumi Fx400 onwards where all ide, just the single speed and 2x where mitsumi interfaces, Toshiba are all ide from memory, I had a 6x one back in the day. Creative branded wise the Panasonic 562/563 where a Panasonic, but again once they did 4x they became ide. I had a creative 563 in my dx2/66 and it came with its own controller card, but I used my soundcard as it had the Panasonic interface on that.

Ah ok sorry I forgot it was only the slow ones.

I read something that certain drives would simply refuse to read CDRs because of the physical structure of the disk being different and somehow the laser would figure that out and tell the drive not to read it, whereas other drives would simply have trouble picking up the ink stain.

Any of the above examples known to tolerate cdrs well? This is my biggest concern as most of my stuff is stored on CDRs now, otherwise I'd just get any old thing.

Actually it looks like my options are limited by what's available anyway. Here are 2 I found. Not sure if either is any good at reading CD-Rs

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/284840701316?hash=ite … ABk9SR5KBjbyDYg

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/275534601272?epid=260 … ABk9SR_DjlbyDYg

wow if you lived in USA you could get one these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/141902302658 . or if you want it to "look" period but would accept a 24x Toshiba then https://www.ebay.com/itm/385514611621 .
Funny how it looks same as the 8x Toshiba https://www.ebay.com/itm/175694982341
To me "looking period" is a bit more important, I will never go down the route of "have to have a 2x" cdrom just because in 1993 it was "time period" correct when I could get one looks same but faster and better just my opinion 😀

The US always has 10x the variety and inventory of Canada which sucks. I have to put up with sub-par selection of everything or pay through the nose for re-shipping...

I guess I'll go with the CRMC-FX810S. Hopefully it reads CDRs. I can't imagine how I'd get Stellar 7 or KQ5 to work if my discs ever got damaged and the drive couldn't read CDRs.

Our 486 which we got in 95 was upgraded to a Creative branded Panasonic drive around 97? as it's original 2x was dying. Not that the 486 really benefitted from the faster drive but that was the cheapest available at the time.
But would think this widens your options somewhat?

Cost isn't really a driving factor in my case. The problem is I have a 2GB partition for games only and with the half dozen or so games I have, which all require CDs, I simply can't fit all the ISOs on that partition for mounting. Therefore I really have to get a cd drive that can read cdrs, as only 1 of my games actually has a factory cd. The sands of time have reduced the rest to copies.

Ok one thing to keep in mind is at what time period the CDR were written. Dyes used at diff times to CDR are somewhat respective of that time period. Brief: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R#Dyes
one thing that simple wiki does not mention is also the CDR reflective layer which was a mylar or painted surface that helped with the read LEDS...
Newer CDR/DVDR drives can usually read most older CDR because of major improvements in tech that can read all the diff dyes but not the inverse and can be very hit and miss as the lasers/pickup leds used at diff times responded better to certain colored dyes. Somewhere in my archives have some very detailed notes about it. Have always had good luck with Imations gold top written back in late 90's thru 2000's. They seem to be readable with new and even the older 8x CDROMs. It is a known fact amoung many old farts that if you want a old 4x or 8x cdrom to read new burned CDR media you have to use old stock 8x or 16 or less media in your newer burner (if it can support burning slow) because that old CDR media has the right dye colors that those old CDROMS can read... i am going off tangent but back in the day there were websites dedicated to burning CDR and having them read on old drives....will look them up

Don’t buy those old used CDROM drives. Try to find a NEW Sony 52x. Or even a used one. These are very reliable. The faster the CDROM drive the better but don’t get a DVD. Stick with the CDR or CDRW.

I would go with the Mitsumi FX400E. Reads cdr well, but is also period correct. Is also relatively reliable and quiet, aside from the seeking sound, which is personally like.

Based on peoples' personal experiences there might be multiple "right" answers. I'm all for period correct but I'm curious why you're saying go for the new stuff Intel. Is it because the old ones are 2nd hand and may break or is there some technology related reason?

Gahhhrrrlic wrote on 2023-05-22, 15:54:

Based on peoples' personal experiences there might be multiple "right" answers. I'm all for period correct but I'm curious why you're saying go for the new stuff Intel. Is it because the old ones are 2nd hand and may break or is there some technology related reason?

Laser diodes, and other components that aren't easily replaced, go bad. Generally, going for the late IDE era drives is easiest way. They're cheaper and more easy to find, and can read and write DVDs too. You just have to be careful that the drive can output Redbook audio, if you care about that. An ASUS drive I got had audio out headers but were functionally useless.

Right now I have 3 NEC ND-3550A. One of them I think has a bad diode or needs a firmware update, because it has issues reading CD-Rs, but the other two are good. I don't know about over burning but they can do everything you need CD and DVD wise minus being period correct. Plus they're cheap as water on eBay.

Gahhhrrrlic wrote on 2023-05-22, 15:54:

Based on peoples' personal experiences there might be multiple "right" answers. I'm all for period correct but I'm curious why you're saying go for the new stuff Intel. Is it because the old ones are 2nd hand and may break or is there some technology related reason?

If your main purpose is being able to read CDR disks, newer drives will prove more reliable in that respect.

While I prefer older, slower drives (i.e. 2x to 8x), I find they are spotty at best when it comes to using CDR disks.

For example, I have a Toshiba 6x that reads CDR disks no problem. On the other hand, I have a couple older Mitsumi drivers (4x and 8x) that have trouble with them.

The one downside of faster drives is they tend to be a lot noisier and take longer to spin up to speed. But they can also typically be throttled using speed limiting programs.

I finally received my 4x Mitsumi FX400 drive. The drive itself runs fine and it does read CDRs so a win there. However the damn thing won't play audio CDs.

Now before I say what I think... what could cause a functioning CD drive not to play audio CDs (although it will show every track in Winamp but just won't play them) ?

Gahhhrrrlic wrote on 2023-07-02, 14:17:

I finally received my 4x Mitsumi FX400 drive. The drive itself runs fine and it does read CDRs so a win there. However the damn thing won't play audio CDs.

Now before I say what I think... what could cause a functioning CD drive not to play audio CDs (although it will show every track in Winamp but just won't play them) ?

did you forget to connect the audio cable ?

or is it just not spinning up the audio cd to start playing it ?