On 24/01/2016 15:50, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
RJH wrote:
I also have any number of CDs that are of similar age and they all play perfectly, same as the day they were made. Same is true for every CD I own.

I'd agree on the retail music and data CDs. But not on writeable, and
certainly not rewritable. Quite a few of mine from 10+ years back can't
be read, and they've been stored in reasonably good conditions.

Pro produced CDs and home ones are made in an entirely different way.


I've no doubt. And made using better quality and more resilient 'blanks'.

On hardware, maybe I've been unlucky and bought badly, but I seem to
have experienced a high number of computer and audio CDP optical drive
failures.

But most PC drives are cheap as chips. Domestic ones were generally much
more expensive. And don't spin as fast.


Yep. Just saying - I haven't had a good experience of certain aspects of
optical media and players. Could well be that everybody else's
experience differs.

I was glad an optical drive wasn't fitted to a recent iMac I've bought.
I got an external drive for the few times I might need it. That's
generally OK, but seems very picky about cables for some reason.

Does it being a Mac mean you can't just fit a cheap as chips replacement?


Being a Mac - IIUC, yes. I think the firmware differs. I looked into it
when my 6 year old iMac's DVD drive started playing up. It wasn't silly
money to replace (and I didn't need to in the end, it seemed to right
itself), but they can be a royal pain in this respect.

--
Cheers, Rob