usb cdrw purchase?

[brianh]

I have a ver b iMac running 8.6. My tray loading cd drive has died and I am saving up to get a new Mac. The family has many programs and games on cd that now can't be played. My ? is without putting more than $300 into this machine will games still run on an external usb 1.1 drive? Will the mac get confused when playing multiple cd games such as MYST or RIVEN?

Thanks for your help,
Brian

[Rhino_G3]

I have seen a usb drive used as the main cd rom and it worked great. I can't vouch for the multi CD games on USB but my firewire CD-RW does great. As soon as it wants the next cd, my firewire drive opens up asking for the new disk.

[Natobasso]

I would definitely opt for a firewire cd drive as opposed to a USB drive simply because firewire is so much faster and more reliable. Ever tried backing up more than 10GB of data to a USB hard drive? It takes forever. Firewire, however, burns through it like it was nothing. Just my simple opinion.

Cheers!

Nato

[scruffy]

It'll work fine, but iot'll be slow

[Cheryl]

LeCie has both versions. I use the USB CDRW and it works great.

[michaelsanford]

I also had a LaCie USB CDRW (12x) which was just great...but reading data will be slow.

And I'm not sure if 8.6 supports FireWire to begin with (please correct me if I'm wrong)?

[brianh]

I decided to go with the external cd drive. It seems to be working fine, my son is playing a via the internet and seems to be reading the cd without to much delay. I guess I have just gotten used to my old slow mac.

Thanks to everyone who responded.

Brian