These days, very few of us use optical media on the regular. If we do, it’s generally with a slot-loading console or car stereo, or an old-school tray-loader in a desktop or laptop. This has been the ...

The 1.44-megabyte floppy-disk drive is an endangered species largely because its primary predator, the CD-rewritable drive, uses media that can store up to 700MB per disk and costs only about $100. CD ...

A CD-ROM drive can be used as a stand-alone unit for playing digital audio CDs without interfacing with a computer. The stereo output of CD player available at the audio jack can be amplified using ...

Everything fails eventually, but moving parts fail fastest of all– and optical drives seemingly more than others, at least in our experience. Even when they work, vintage drives often have trouble ...