He is at least ten years old, still running strong, still running XP. I gave him a new power supply maybe five years ago. Lately, the DVD drive stopped working, jammed solid, won't open. I pulled the drive out and got the covers off, but couldn't get it to open.
So I googled for a new one. They are really cheap, $35. There was a time you had to pay more than that for a 5 inch floppy drive. I was about to click it into my cart and go thru the checkout business, when I noticed an acronym, SATA. A vague memory of SATA as a high speed serial interface surfaced from all the sludge sloshing around in my memory. Trusty Desktop used the old flat cable IDE interface.
Ayup. Times have changed, all the new optical drives are SATA, nobody makes the old IDE drives anymore. Maybe E-bay? I'd hate to junk trusty desktop and suffer thru Windows 10 on a new one.