To start, I've never used linux, and am really not very familiar with how drivers work and all that, so bear with me.

I'm working on a project to replace a usb dvd drive that's being used with a machine running redhat 2 (not sure if its 2.0 or 2.1, or if that matters).
Assuming that there are currently drivers on the machine that are running the existing dvd drive, would I be able to use a different dvd drive (different brand, model, everything) without any new drivers?

Any help would be great.

Are you running Red Hat 2 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2? Can you post the output of:

cat /etc/issue

I assume you are running RHEL AS 2.1, since "Red Hat 2" is ancient ;-).

Generally, what matters is that the usb chipset in the new usb drive is supported by the installed version of Red Hat. If you have the USB DVD drive in a generic 5.25 inch enclosure, that DVD is probably a PATA or SATA DVD drive. You should be able to replace it without replacing the enclosure. In that case, I believe Red Hat will use the same driver, since the hardware providing the USB connection has not changed.

In general, all of the drivers available on a RHEL release are installed when you install a kernel package set for that release. Proprietary vendor supplied drivers would be the only exception. Generally, though, any supported piece of hardware at the time of release had its drivers included in the install.

If upgrading the Red Hat version is not an option, neither drive is in a generic 5.25 inch enclosure, and the new drive does not work, I would recommend finding an old PATA->USB 5.25 inch enclosure and putting a PATA DVD drive in it. If the enclosure dates from the time around or before the release of AS 2.1, it has a good chance of being supported 'out-of-the-box'.