[SOLVED] Optical Drives for XP 32 bit and FIC K8M-800M motherboard

Apr 6, 2021
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I am looking to do some improvements to my Windows XP tower. To begin with, the optical drive is malfunctioning. Sometimes it will work, other times you put a disc in and its like it is not even there. Windows sees the drive in My Computer, but it won't read the discs and these work in other machines. I would rather not buy another used replacement off ebay for it to fail within a year like the last two. I would like to take advantage of the SATA ports on the motherboard and go up to DVD-RW. However, my research on the motherboard has taught me that the two included Sata 1 ports are very difficult to get working and apparently won't recognize SATA II or III unless HDD/Optical drive is jumper set to SATA I. So my question is are there any current optical drives that have SATA jumper settings and if not, what are the most recent ones that do? That also support 32 bit XP.

Specs:
Tower: Emachine T3302
Operating System: Windows XP Home SP3 32 bit
Motherboard: FIC K8M-800M Socket 754
CPU: AMD Sempron 3300 2.0 GHz
Ram: 2 GB Kingston DDR1
Current HDD: Western Digital 250 GB 7200 RPM IDE
Video Card: HIS IceQ ATI Radeon HD 4670 1 GB AGP 8x
Current Optical Drive: HL-DT-ST IDE CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo. Original: IDE Lite On SOHC Combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Current PSU: Corsair RMx550

I spent 8 years from 2010 on going through I think seven used hard drives on this tower that lasted about year or two each, until in 2018, I found a WD HDD similar to the original (just bigger), but as "New Old Stock" instead of used. I don't want to repeat the same cycle with the CD player.

My two options are to hunt for an New Old Stock IDE optical drive or pinpoint a suitable "newer" SATA drive that supports XP and will play nice with this finicky motherboard. I am guessing some model from around say late 2000s or early 2010s but I am having trouble finding information through internet searches and some had XP support but dropped it later, and some others seem to only support 64 bit.

I have had this computer since December 2005 and it has transitioned from primary computer to sort of a retro gaming machine for my extensive early 2000s software collection, most of which requires CD and hence the difficulty. I have two newer computers including a Ryzen 5 3600 build with Windows 10, so lets please not do the whole "you should upgrade OS/get a new computer".
 
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Solution
if you have any optical drives laying around, try them to see if they will work in the xp computer, if all else fails go on ebay and look for drives that were manufactured during the xp era/around the time your mobo was manufacrted and look for the year in the pictures or the posting or description.

Pc6777

Honorable
Dec 18, 2014
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if you have any optical drives laying around, try them to see if they will work in the xp computer, if all else fails go on ebay and look for drives that were manufactured during the xp era/around the time your mobo was manufacrted and look for the year in the pictures or the posting or description.
 
Solution

aoresteen

Distinguished
Apr 7, 2016
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A few years back I had the same issue. I just bought two different used IDE DVD drives off ebay for $15 each. The 1st one I installed and it is still working today. The 2nd one I used 6 months later in a WinXP build and it is still working as well. Optical drives wear out.