Who knows maybe the old drives were built better and will outlast the newer stuff. I should have half a dozen or more external SCSI CDR/RW drives that should still be working (you pick up a local lot and you tend to find one in it along with old modems).

The thing I worry about is media, companies changing the composition of the dye and reflective background so much that the old burners hav no idea what to make of it. I read a while back the original Pionere 1x DVDR drives had issues with newer media (and who would want to burn a DVD at 1x anyway)?

I have an IDE to 50 pin SCSI adapter made especially to fit behind a 5.25 drive that I used to test a DVD ROM drive in a 68K mac, maybe I will test it out someday on an IDE burner. The problem we will most likely face is the old burning software will not have a driver for the newer drive so even if the system sees the drive you are still out of luck burning with it.