White SATA dvd-rom : did they even exist?

[y2faulty]

(hopefully it's the right place)

like the title says, do white/beige/light gray (ie not black) SATA dvd rom reader or writer even exists? A friend of mine is looking for one but can only find IDE ones.

And I don't recall off the top of my head to ever have seen one.

 

[eidairaman1]

There are SATA to IDE adapters for this

 

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

I usually just take off the face-plate and paint it.

 

[LabRat 891]

There are SATA to IDE adapters for this

That.

Bi-Directional SATA IDE Adapter - Drive Adapters and Drive Converters | Hard Drive Accessories | StarTech.com

Bi-Directional SATA IDE Adapter Converter

www.startech.com

-and, if you're very pedantic/lucky, you can swap faceplace/tray cover between similar models.
(Though delicate, you can remove the trim and paint it with Krylon Fusion or some other Plastic-bonding paint, too)

Looks like Pioneer, Samsung, and Toshiba have White/Beige IDE models available on eBay.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

If I remember correctly. Both Pioneer and Samsung had grey/beige Dvd sata drives. I may have one or two in a box somewhere.

The grey/beige units weren't very common but they did exist.

 

[y2faulty]

thx y'all!

yeah I know he could use an adapter but I think he's going through the "historically accurate" route.

My question was more out of curiosity, because I really don't remember ever seeing one.

I seem to recall some units with swappable frontplate (black/whtie) to exist, but dont know if they were IDE or what.

 

[eidairaman1]

They did

 

[Hardcore Games]

I have used beige CD-ROM but DVD and BD mostly were black as chassis paint changed from beige to black

Spray paint is cheap if the color is not acceptable, welcome custom rigs

 

[FreedomEclipse]

$98 for a refurbed unit is such a scam.

 

[DaemonForce]

I remember Plextor making a ton of cheap ones. I have white Sony CD and DVD burners but they're both IDE.
Thanks to a squirrely eMachines I now have one sata flavored Lightscribe drive with a black bezel. Seems popular.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I remember being super OCD about having TWO optical drives. You can get one drive that reads and writes but you always wanted one to do ALL the reads and the other to do all the writes.

This was the way.

 

[LabRat 891]

I remember being super OCD about having TWO optical drives. You can get one drive that reads and writes but you always wanted one to do ALL the reads and the other to do all the writes.

This was the way.

Wasn't an issue w/ SATA, but I remember doing this on IDE/PATA and (at least once) forgetting to put the drives on separate channels

 

[Calenhad]

Once upon a time there was this thing called buffer underrun. The first pc I had which was capable of burning cds had scsi devices to get around the whole mess of master/slave and separate channels with PATA and still be able to do a disc to disc copy without temporarily copying the disc to hdd first. Because a 700MB cd was a serious chuck of disk space when you had a 3.2GB hdd (unformatted capacity even)

There should be grey drives available out there. Office boxes with dvd roms were still grey for many years

 

[anonuser57]

I have 2 different broken white SATA DVD readers so I know for a fact they existed.

 

[Palladium]

Once upon a time there was this thing called buffer underrun. The first pc I had which was capable of burning cds had scsi devices to get around the whole mess of master/slave and separate channels with PATA and still be able to do a disc to disc copy without temporarily copying the disc to hdd first. Because a 700MB cd was a serious chuck of disk space when you had a 3.2GB hdd (unformatted capacity even)

There should be grey drives available out there. Office boxes with dvd roms were still grey for many years

It was a PITA to run these POS optical drives that would still occasionally misburn at the best of times. I'm so glad they were all gone. Everyone around me in school stopped burning discs in favor of 32/64MB USB drives in 2004.

 

[eidairaman1]

It was a PITA to run these POS optical drives that would still occasionally misburn at the best of times. I'm so glad they were all gone. Everyone around me in school stopped burning discs in favor of 32/64MB USB drives in 2004.

Never had a problem, also i put a odd in a rig from 2021 so that I could install W11 instead of waiting for it to download.

 

[Ruru]

If you end up using an adapter, remember to put the drive to the cable select mode. At least I had problems otherwise (though with HDDs but anyway).

 

[y2faulty]

thx y'all. I guess they actually DID exist. The more you know!

 

[Frick]

Never had a problem, also i put a odd in a rig from 2021 so that I could install W11 instead of waiting for it to download.

That's why we have USB sticks.

 

[Harlow]

I seem to recall some units with swappable frontplate (black/whtie) to exist, but dont know if they were IDE or what.

I recall buying several IDE CD and DVD writers which came with 3 front panels, white, beige/cream and black. The spare front panels are probably still lurking in a box somewhere. My first optical drives were SCSI..

 

[Ruru]

I recall buying several IDE CD and DVD writers which came with 3 front panels, white, beige/cream and black. The spare front panels are probably still lurking in a box somewhere. My first optical drives were SCSI..

Yeah, they were a thing back in the day. I also got an used Gigabyte PATA DVD burner with bundled changeable faceplates.

The best thing was that if luck was on your side and the clip holes matched on your other drives, so you could use them with other drives as well. Like with laptop drives, they're usually using the same clipholes.

That's why we have USB sticks.

And when even MS has a software to make you a bootable media, I can't complain. I just like to have optical drive(s) on retro rigs, but that's a totally different story.

 

[AusWolf]

I'm pretty sure I had one roughly 20 years ago. I think it was an NEC.

 

[Ruru]

I'm pretty sure I had one roughly 20 years ago. I think it was an NEC.

Probably a PATA one, SATA drives weren't a thing until 2006-2007 IIRC

I think that even the first BD drives were with PATA interface?

 

[AusWolf]

Probably a PATA one, SATA drives weren't a thing until 2006-2007 IIRC

I think that even the first BD drives were with PATA interface?

I had some pics of the PC I built around 2008 in a far-away folder on some HDD somewhere. Let me see if I can find them. I'm pretty sure that PC had a white SATA drive (though I might be wrong).

 

[Ruru]

I had some pics of the PC I built around 2008 in a far-away folder on some HDD somewhere. Let me see if I can find them. I'm pretty sure that PC had a white SATA drive (though I might be wrong).

I don't doubt you, though that may be from 2005 and forwards

Can't remember when the first SATA dvd-drives hit the market, I just have a memory that it would be in early 2007-ish.