Yesterday I was playing around with my other CD-RW drive which only works under Windows.
Someone suggested the issue might stem from my IDE adapter, so I tried it with this one again, just to find it stopped working at some point.
Why I find particularly this one a great loss
It worked just fine with Linux, unlike the other one.
But also, the audio output is clean.
The other one is extremely noisy. This one on the other hand doesn't even produce audible hiss, like my phone does, for example.
That brings me to a second point, the play button. Like many older IDE drives, it has a headphone jack in addition to the rear audio port. But the play/skip button means it needs no command to start playing audio from a computer, and therefore I could also use it as a standalone CD player.
Yet I could still use it for burning and reading data discs.
What it does now
It can't read burned discs reliably. With audio, it will keep skipping. It also produces unreadable burns.
It can still play pressed discs, which suggests major laser degradation at the young age of 23 years. (It did have issues skipping tracks even before, so it wasn't that sudden.)
I don't know how to test that, but it works fine with pressed CDs. Well, only up to some speed.
try give it a clean and relube
Seems mostly OK when moved manually.
But anyway, I'll need to source some appropriate lube. My printer's scanner could also use some of it. I'll have to research what lubricants there are. It needs to be safe for plastic.
Also featuring: "We can save a few cents on a connector"
The driver motors are very weak, it only takes a tiny increase in friction for them to be unable to keep up with tracking. I always go to a mechanical service on devices this old.
I believe most of the time they use silicone based greases. Thats the kind of grease that usually is mostly translucent and a clear or whitish color. Petroleum base greases like the ever present white lithium isn't good for the plastics long term.