I usually burn with the lowest selectable speed on the burner. Usually makes the discs more readable on older readers.

Burn them at lowest possible speed i.e. x2.

Early drives won't even read CD-Rs. Some were even picky about the "brand" of CD-Rs.

kixs wrote on 2023-11-25, 09:33:

Early drives won't even read CD-Rs. Some were even picky about the "brand" of CD-Rs.

Maybe if you burn them according a certain standard?

My Sony CDP-101 reads burned CD's, but that's audio.

Yes, they usually have problems reading CD-R. The only solution that I'm aware of is to increase the laser's voltage. Just install a newer CD-ROM 😀

Early drives may be more compatible with early media.
Unfortunately, modern discs are heavily cost-reduced.
If you can find good brand pre-2000 NOS media, then give it a try.

Grzyb wrote on 2023-11-25, 10:20:

Early drives may be more compatible with early media.
Unfortunately, modern discs are heavily cost-reduced.
If you can find good brand pre-2000 NOS media, then give it a try.

Maybe CD-RW from my xbox time (2003) have same

envagyok wrote on 2023-11-25, 10:34:

Maybe CD-RW from my xbox time (2003) have same

Forget about using CD-RW media with early drives.

Some very old drives may only read CD-ROM.
Most drives should read good CD-R.
CD-RW, however, came much later, and has much higher requirements about drives.

Experiment with recording DAO instead of SAO or TAO (make sure to close disk/session in the end). One of my old cd-roms is perfectly fine with CD-Rs when written Disk-At-Once but refuses to read anything else (including CD-RWs). On the other hand, there are reports that reverse might also be true (Re: Best options to feed old CD (2x, 4x) drive with CD-R media).
Also use the most compatible settings you can find for other stuff (ISO 9660 level 1 maybe even without Joliet, etc.)

Do not try rewrite media. It will fail for sure.
Well, I haven't had any problem with my LU005S drives and CD-R. (except I've been that stupid and put them to scrap 23 years ago)

As Grzyb mentioned you need compatible cd-r media, the new 48x, 52x types generally will not read in many very old cdroms. You need media that states something like 1x-24x compatible or similar..... imho
I would not expect a Mits LU005s to read any cd-r being a 1x proprietary cdrom. The NEC is a 6x and would have much newer firmware and should read cd-r if you burn them properly but being a "cd changer" it may also have issues compared to a standard single disk 6x cdrom. My Toshiba 4x and Plextor 6x read cd-r just fine if I use proper media and burn propely....

kixs wrote on 2023-11-25, 09:33:

Early drives won't even read CD-Rs. Some were even picky about the "brand" of CD-Rs.

You're right, but I remember that the Mitsumi LU005S was very forgiving back in the day.

It could read most CD-ROMs in the house that were unreadable by all the other PCs.
Especially mixed-mode types (CD Audio+Data) worked fine.

I *think* we used it with early writable CDs, too.
But that was well over 20 years ago.
Not sure how compatible nowadays CD-R's are. Maybe writing them at 4x or so may help getting better results.
At home, we often used the slowest speed for reliability purposes.

That being said, some CD writer drives maybe need a higher speed, because of stability reasons.
That depends on the design (mechanics etc) . At one given point/speed, the CD spins most stable in a drive.

My personal experience is that's it's mostly a quality of media problem, not so much a burn speed issue (although burning at a lower speed might help). Later generation discs are of much lower quality (easier and cheaper to produce I assume) and the older drives don't have the required error correction to read those discs. Try to find a batch of old high quality discs (circa 2000). In my experience the 650MB discs work better in older drives. I think this has to do with the capability of the precision of the laser. Overall, it's a bit of mix and match to see what works best.

dominusprog wrote on 2023-11-25, 10:12:

Yes, they usually have problems reading CD-R. The only solution that I'm aware of is to increase the laser's voltage. Just install a newer CD-ROM 😀

700Mb CD-R does not work in all Drvies.

Some only read 650Mb CD-R.
To be fair, early CD-ROMs are all 650Mb Discs.

Older drives are more sensitive to disc quality. This is also an issue with some 1990s game consoles.
The Taiyo Yuden plant in Japan made high quality CDRs that are much more compatible with picky drives.
For the last several years it was operating, Taiyo Yuden was owned by JVC and the packaging was branded as "JVC Professional" or something like that. They also kept the name Taiyo Yuden as a footnote somewhere, since people still remembered that name.
If they came from that plant the packaging will say "Made in Japan". I saw some on eBay but prices and Country of Origin varies.
I think they shut down at the end of 2015 or so. They were the last Japanese plant making CDRs.
After that the Taiyo Yuden brand was sold to CMC Magnetics and the discs come from a CMC plant somewhere.
I ordered most of my Japanese TY discs from MediaSupply - that site still sells newly manufactured quality-oriented discs but no CDRs come from Japan anymore. They might still be good - I just don't know.

When I lived in California I sometimes found old CDRs at Goodwill. They were still in good condition and worked well, but it was a dry climate. Thrift stores are more fruitful in some places than others - I haven't seen nearly as much tech junk after moving to FL.
Discs like to be cool, dry, and dark.

Keep in mind the name on the packaging usually isn't who made the discs, that name is just a marketing facade.
If you find any old CDRs that are marked made in Japan, they're probably good (unless age has ruined them).

I haven’t had any issues getting my 8x or 24x cdrom drives to read modern burned cdrs, but that may mostly be luck. I do burn everything in a single go, finishing it, I forget the term for that, disc at once? Mastering? Anyway, I do burn them at 24x, but I don’t think that has any impact. I think I mostly just got lucky that my old cdrom drives just happen to support cdrs.

shamino wrote on 2024-02-08, 00:51:

Older drives are more sensitive to disc quality. This is also an issue with some 1990s game consoles. The Taiyo Yuden plant in […]
Show full quote

Older drives are more sensitive to disc quality. This is also an issue with some 1990s game consoles.
The Taiyo Yuden plant in Japan made high quality CDRs that are much more compatible with picky drives.
For the last several years it was operating, Taiyo Yuden was owned by JVC and the packaging was branded as "JVC Professional" or something like that. They also kept the name Taiyo Yuden as a footnote somewhere, since people still remembered that name.
If they came from that plant the packaging will say "Made in Japan". I saw some on eBay but prices and Country of Origin varies.
I think they shut down at the end of 2015 or so. They were the last Japanese plant making CDRs.
After that the Taiyo Yuden brand was sold to CMC Magnetics and the discs come from a CMC plant somewhere.
I ordered most of my Japanese TY discs from MediaSupply - that site still sells newly manufactured quality-oriented discs but no CDRs come from Japan anymore. They might still be good - I just don't know.

When I lived in California I sometimes found old CDRs at Goodwill. They were still in good condition and worked well, but it was a dry climate. Thrift stores are more fruitful in some places than others - I haven't seen nearly as much tech junk after moving to FL.
Discs like to be cool, dry, and dark.

Keep in mind the name on the packaging usually isn't who made the discs, that name is just a marketing facade.
If you find any old CDRs that are marked made in Japan, they're probably good (unless age has ruined them).

100% this

people fixate on the speed but that's really not that important, the quality and *type* of media matters way more

taiyo-yuden discs used a totally different dye from most of the other brands which is largely why they work so much better in older drives