It WAS a working dvd burner. But it suffered some kind of write error {I failed to preserve the exact error code} while burning an Linux installation iso to disk the other day.
Since then none of the 4 working linux can detect any media in the drive anymore. Can't see blank dvd-r nor blank cd-r nor even a factory burned photofinish cd I had laying around.
I used K3B's set-up screens to display what it could detect:
http://i40.tinypic.com/344piya.png

I hate to admit that I even tried from windowsXP & According to the windowsXP device manager, it's still working properly, But like the 4 installed Linux, it doesn't detect any media.

I think it's right and truly dead, even if it still opens & closes and the lights still come on when I insert a disk...

So I plan to replace it. But I think I'd like to go with an external dvd burner {model not yet determined} because it's portable and can therefore be easily moved from one computer to another...

But I've never used one so I'm not sure if I'd be able to boot from it. At least with the 2005 era HP Pavilion a1410n that currently needs one.

It's bios boot order settings don't include a usb option. (Just floppy, cd, harddrive, & network) And I have no idea if these bios would see an external cd/dvd drive as a cd so that I could boot the mageia-3-x86_64-dvd-iso I wanted to install Mageia Linux from...

Suggestions anyone?

You could try booting a USB flash drive. See if that computer can boot USB devices at all first. In my BIOS (2004 era) there is an option called 'Boot other media'. Try that option.

Edit:
I booted my external USB burner and installed Debian 7.0. The burner doesn't show up as a boot device option before it's connected. So try booting a USB flash drive first.

Only trouble is, I don't have a bootable flash drive... I do however have an expendable 2gig non-bootable one. And my desktop is still using grub legacy. So I'm thinking that if I clone my boot partition on the flash drive, and add a uniquely named file, such as "fInDtHiSbOoT" to give the grubshell a better chance to find the {device} with:
Then I'd edit it's menu.lst to include something evil looking like:
so I can tell at a glance if the it was the grub menu from the flashdrive that boots or not... I know it's unlikely that this will result in a reliable grub menu, the {device} might be different next time... but if I mount the flashdrive on /boot, and use the grubshell to:
Then it might if I can get it to boot, at least put a horrendous looking grub menu on the screen...

OR maybe there is a good howto somewhere on an easier way to make a flashdrive bootable???

I have two external USB CD/DVD drives, a Memorex and a Pioneer.

They both worked out of the box with Linux. I've burned thousands of disks with them.

I've no doubts about Linux finding way to burn with a usb DVD. (once Linux is booted that is...)

My only concern is if my 8 yr old bios, which doesn't have a usb boot option, will let me use one as a boot device so I can install from it and/or fire up a "LiveCD" etc...

But thanks for the info. It's reassuring to hear.

Turns out that i_joh was right... After I found out about something called unetbootin that I could easily install to one of my existing Linux, I soon turned a flashdrive into a bootable installation media for Mageia3... Once the flashdrive was bootable AND connected, it showed up in the hard drive boot order list... I was able to install Mageia with it. I can't prove it until I get a usb dvd drive. But I suspect that it will also be properly detected...