• Vinny_93@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 months ago

      You can just buy an internal DVD-ROM drive and install it in your pc. If you lack an IDE port on your motherboard you can use PCIe expansion cards. Power can be supplied by Molex.

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 months ago

        Most gaming pc cases now don’t have any bay slots on the front panel. USB power buttons and audio plugs got moved to the top and all the slots for floppy and CD drives just vanished.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        Bruh I’m comfortable building my own PCs and that still sounds way more effort than just buying an external optical drive with USB interface.

        • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          Whenever I see a SATA optical drive that someone doesn’t want, I grab it and tuck it away. Shit is rare now.

          I’m sure I could go to a shop and just pick one up, but honestly, I don’t have a reason to. Give me an opportunity to snag one for free and I will not pass it up.

      • Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        4 months ago

        yea, but that’s pretty janky. external if you’ve got a small desktop or laptop - go internal if you can (still rocking my cd drive in my desktop)

      • cm0002@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 months ago

        If you lack an IDE port on your motherboard

        Bro, IDE has been dead for YEARS now, I’d be shocked if there was an IDE connector on any consumer computer made in the last 10 years (Industrial stuff can get weird)

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        I have an external Blu ray drive at this point.

        I’ve always wanted a good quality 3.5" external drive. I rarely have an internal disc drive (cd/dvd/BR) on any of my computers. A few years ago I had the need to pull some files off of a 3.5" floppy, I had to boot up an old Dell PE 2850 server that had a 3.5" drive on it to get the files off the drive. Luckily the copy of Windows server 2003 still booted, and the raid array was operational. It was like a miracle getting that stuff off that disk.

        It was late at night and I couldn’t wait until morning to go buy a USB 3.5" drive to get the data.

        I work in IT and people question my sanity when I’m walking home with SCSI interfaces and corresponding SCSI tape drives. I even picked up a zip 100 usb drive at some point.

        I never used it for it’s intended purpose, but as soon as someone needs data off of some archive, on an outdated storage format, I become the MVP.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Despite only having a few disc drive dependent games, this and the amount of USB ports is why I got the budget desktop I got around a couple years ago. Having a disk drive has been great, especially when I got a few CDs and don’t feel like using the old Sony Discman I got because it sometimes just stops after certain songs.

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 months ago

      With powered hubs and balanced tree topology, you can split a single root controller into 45 endpoints. Your motherboard being able to support that many devices and the shared bandwidth might be a problem, but it’s theoretically possible to survive off of a single USB port.

  • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    4 months ago

    There’s some slight benefit to having games that are just a sticker with a license number in the box. Probably, the only one benefit though.

  • umbraroze@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 months ago

    Pro tip: if you have a physical copy of a game and it’s also available on Steam, try registering the CD key. (Obviously doesn’t work if the game doesn’t have a CD key. Or if the publisher is a dick. looking at you, EA)

    • PancakeBrock@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I never did it on steam but years back I contacted origin support and they let me register all my old ea games keys and still have them on the ea app. Not great but I thought it was cool.

      They let me do all of them except battlefield Vietnam. They said they didn’t have that one available to download at the time.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I have an external DVD-RW on a shelf just in case. Every once in a while I need to bring it out and I wonder if a giant boulder is going to start rolling at me when I grab it.

    • KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      4 months ago

      I actually have a SATA cable and power plug discreetly tucked in a spot in my PC case and have just taken the side off and plugged in a drive on occasion. It’s normal purpose is troubleshooting other hard drives, but it works for that too

    • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
      0·
      4 months ago

      I just bought an external cd/dvd drive so I can convert my DVD library into a digital one for convenience and to preserve the dvds longer.

      I’m having some issues with the speed of conversion, but my biggest problem is quickly becoming storage space.

      Also, I dug up some of my old games like Caesar III and installed a no-CD “patch”.

      Good times.

      There’s an adapter or replacement for everything

  • cheddar@programming.dev
    0·
    4 months ago

    Then you get a drive, but the game you loved is no longer playable since the server it is using to confirm its license has been offline for years.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      No lie, a large amount of my digital media was pulled from physical disks.

      I set up a system with a ton of space and two optical drives and just cycled through, disk after disk, pulling the content off. Once I had it, I ran it through handbrake and converted it to H.264 (AVC/AAC), and then put all the disks away and forgot about them.