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.

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 ...

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 ...