Most tray loading drives seem to work in a Pismo. I have a few dead pismo drives come through my hands, and I was lucky enough to have a few parts PC laptops. I took the optical drives, popped them into the pismo cage, put them in, and they worked great!

Some drives do not function at full capacity (i.e. Quanta DVD/CDRW Combo only worked as a DVD/CD drive, no RW). The DVDRW and other combo drives seemed to work fine. Most of the time the existing faceplate works but is ugly.

Note, I have not put the pismo faceplate on any of the drives I have. I just leave them as is.