24x are not "older" in my books. 😁 I started out with a Mitsumi FX001D, which came still with a proprietary interface card, and it could not read CD-R, except for some. I think Kodak Gold were ok. But back then CD-Rs were so expensive anyway... So yeah, if you stick to some mid 90s CD-ROM drives you might have problems with CD-R.

CD-RW typically can only be read by a drive compliant with MultiRead. Most ODDs manufactured after 1999 support this.

CD-R is more lenient but you really need to burn them at the slowest possible speed; even then they will often be hit-or-miss depending on the age and/or health of the ODD in question. From experience, I can't really see most drives slower than 8X reading CD-Rs reliably.

I even have a dvd-rom drive that can't read a cd-rw.

old CD drives have difficulties with CDR for multiple reasons. They might not work with multisession discs since that is something that came with CDRs but the biggest issue is that CDRs are less reflective and what is reflected is not quite the same as pressed CDs. Old drives have issues detecting the weaker and slighty different reflection.

Old drives means mostly 4x or lower, and cheap 8x or lower drives. Most good 6x or better drives are reasonably compatible in my experience. However, it is still advisable to write discs as slow as possible. Also for old drives I would avoid writing multiple sessions.

CDRW are even worse. they reflect even less light than CDR. It doesn't help that they are unreliable even on the drives that wrote them.

Some old drives also have limitations with reading 700MB and above, only 650MB/74m.

Koltoroc wrote:

CDRW are even worse. they reflect even less light than CDR. It doesn't help that they are unreliable even on the drives that wrote them.

That is true only for early models of writers like 8x4x24 or less, all discs written on later HiSpeed burners working as intended in any compatible drive.

root42 wrote:

24x are not "older" in my books. 😁 I started out with a Mitsumi FX001D, which came still with a proprietary interface card, and it could not read CD-R, except for some. I think Kodak Gold were ok. But back then CD-Rs were so expensive anyway... So yeah, if you stick to some mid 90s CD-ROM drives you might have problems with CD-R.

As root42 said, most 16x and newer will read any media (unless they're damaged). I'd expect to find problems with 4x and older drives, but compatibility will improve with faster drives... 16x is a safe bet, I guess (maybe the cut would be 8x or 12x).

Also, keep in mind that some readers had problems with media recorded at "fast" speeds (i.e.: I had a old discman that played CDRs recorded at 1x but not a 4x). I saw it with audio players, but maybe it happens on computer drives as well.

The oldest CD-ROM drive I have is a 4x speed NEC MultiSpin installed in my NEC Ready. It can't read CD-RWs at all, but CD-Rs have worked pretty well for the most part when burned at 8x speed.

I think this may vary on a drive by drive basis... I once had to recover data from some CD-Rs that were failing - I was trying every single drive I had on hand. I found that a Panasonic CR562 2x drive and a caddy loaded 1x drive would read CD-Rs that wouldn't read on more modern drives. Perhaps the slow speed helps. These were cheap cdr discs I burnt at whatever the maxmium speed of the drive I had in the system at the time - they weren't specifically burnt at slow speed.

Yep, I've seen some drives have variable compatibility in the 1990s era of computing. I have a Dell Latitude C-series CD-ROM drive module (mfg'd in 1998) that reads CD-R but not CD-RW, I had an iBook G3 Clamshell that had trouble reading CD-Rs (which is weird because it's a 1999 laptop, but I guess this means any 90s drive could be hit or miss in terms of compatibility), and I remember hearing about Wearnes drives (used by Compaq at the time) not being able to read burnt discs at all.

FWIW the CD-ROM drives in my old P1 Toshiba laptops (ranging from 1996 to 98) can read CD-Rs just fine (no CD-RWs ofc).

I see. Well, I'll try to go as low as I can afford speed-wise. But it's quite possible that this 486 build will turn me into a law abiding citizen after all 😀.
If only I was more stationary to store some hundred boxed games I'd like to get. Well, one of these days.. But then I'd probably cherish it to much to actually play from the original CDs and would end up using copies regardless 🤣.

I have a 1x CD-ROM drive (SCSI) which reads CD-R, but it results in damaged files being read.
Scratched my head trying to figure out why windows 95 setup fails

Same here. Our1x speed Mitsumi LU005S could read mixed-mode CD-ROMs and CD-Rs from what I remember.

cd-r should be read. i even remember my neighbour playing a copy of the cd of Commmand and conquer DOS on a cdrom with caddy that was 1x.

now cdRW is another story. those when they came out..Cd-RW discs the ones that you can burn and erase and burn again, could only be read by the burner. that was untill more modern drives came out being able to read all media types.

i had one of the first CD-RW drives which was a brand: ricoh, the first one i belive, if it was not a philips drive, can't remember which of the 2 came first

I do often install cd burners on my retro PCs because that makes it easy to transfer files from my main pc to them using cd-rw disks.

I believe it's hardware dependent for reading R and RW disks, and which software was used to burn said disks. In Windows Vista and higher, it'll ask you to choose between flash drive mode or standard mode for burning the disks (flash drive mode was meant for XP or higher, and standard mode is for every OS). I've always used different burning software since that'll allow you to change the burning speed for older drives, or a better OS to support burning disks at slower speeds, such as Linux. I've yet to test the Creative Labs CR-563-B to see how it handles a burnt CD-R/RW since I've repaired the drive.

I have no issues with the Sega CD, Saturn, PlayStation, and 3DO when it comes to reading CDR media, even burned at the maximum speed my SATA drive supports. I don't have any early CDROM drives. I think the oldest I have is like a 12X, which puts it well out of the realm of inquiry.

The Sega Mega-CD was a single speed drive, too, according to that 150KB/s transfer rate.
http://www.cyberiapc.com/vgg/sega_cd.htm