On Jun 22, 2004, at 12:18 PM, Hauke Fath wrote:

> At 18:37 Uhr -0500 21.6.2004, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>> No? I did a little experimenting, and found that the old Apple 300i
>> can read Memorex 48X CD-R media (burned at 24X for good measure), but
>> not TDK CD-RW.
>
>> From my experience, drives older than about 1998 apparently are not 
>> able to
> read CD-RW. I've seen this with
>
> - the cdrom drive in a Quadra 650
> - the cdrom drive of a Thinkpad 380D (~1997)
> - a Philips 8x SCSI drive (~1998) with Windows 95.

A few years ago a PC support guy told me a good rule of thumb to use is 
"if the drive read speed is 12x or better it will probably support 
reading CDRW".  That rule has proven to be pretty reliable.

-bob