A mildly annoying trend over recent years has been for USB hardware devices to expose a CD-ROM drive containing their drivers for Windows users. Of course there’s no real CD in there ...

It supports DVD-ROM, DVD-video, CD-R/RW, CD-ROM/XA, CD-ROM ... it's a convenient means of instantly adding a CD/DVD drive to your laptop. At just under $17, it's a cheaper alternative to the ...

A CD-ROM drive that holds a small number of CD-ROMs for individual use on a desktop computer. Although it can swap discs, it typically contains only one drive and can only read one at a time.

A cable used to send audio CD sound to the computer's sound card. When playing audio CDs, CD-ROM drives output analog sound to both a headphone jack and external connector just like a CD player.

If, on the other hand, you were among the few who invested in CD-ROM when it was first released ... for the interface that hooks up the CD drive to your computer, as [Tech Tangents] found out ...