MG-Cars.info

Welcome to our Site for MG, Triumph and Austin-Healey Car Information.

Recommendations

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG MG Y Type - Let there be Ys CDs

I have both of the Let There Be Ys CDs but no longer have a PC with a CD drive. Who'd have thought CDs would become that obsolete?!

If I want to use these CDs, I have to connect an ancient optical drive via a SATA dock to a USB3 port, which is clunky and slow. I can't copy the CD contents to HDD because the original copyright protection stops it working.

Is there a workaround or solution given the demise of CD drives generally? I can't be the only one with this problem.
R Ades

Hi Robert

Yes indeed - it is a silly cost cutting move in my opinion by manufacturers in the desire to produce "slim line" cases at an ever cheaper price. As John Ruskin famously said in his Law of Business

"There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person's lawful prey.
It is unwise to pay too much, but it is also unwise to pay too little.
When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all.
When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing you bought it to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot ...

It can't be done.
If you deal with the lowest bidder it is well to add something for the risk you run.
And if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better."

Which actually brings me to the answer to your question Robert and I have done some research specifically for Australia (but if anyone else needs specific country based searches I will research those to) please try:

1) Officeworks.com.au https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/verbatim-external-slimline-cd-dvd-writer-vbcddvdwrt. Your nearest Officeworks retail outlet can me found at 377 Glen Huntly Road, Elsternwick, VIC 3185 which I think is just down the road from you.

Alternately
2) Try Amazon Australia at https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=external%20cd%20drive

Hopefully one of those should be able to meet your needs.

Best wishes

Paul
Paul Barrow

Robert & Paul
I have tried many time (including just now) to run the CD on an external CD drive without success even though I follow the instruction to open the file in Windows XP compatibility mode.

I there have kept my old laptop handy so I can run the CD on that device.
FYI it is a LG Slim Line CD Writer manufactured in May 2015. It reads other CDs.


Stuart
Stuart Duncan

Can your external drive read other CDs Stuart?
Paul Barrow

Hi all,
my experience is a bit different
I have an old PC, running Windows 10
Its DVD reader died, and I bought an external drive USB connected.
LTBY's and the manuals on CD run fine for me. I just access then using the file explorer and their front page opens .
Drive is
LG "Slim Portable DVD Writer"
Model GP60NB50
SVC code NB70
Manufactured April 2020

regards Kevin M
K G Mills

Hi again Robert,
One of life's little mysteries.
To get the model no. I removed the cd drive connection.
After it was plugged back in, and a PC restart, cd did not work.
But when i plug cd in with the pc turned on, then use file explorer, it all works fine.
what can I say. Well, I'll be leaving it together now. pdf is messed up screen shot, sorry
good luck KGM
K G Mills

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments. My tribulations started when I had to retire my Win10 machines because Microsoft no longer support that system and I was forced onto Win11. I had to buy a new desktop and laptop. None of the new machines are designed for optical drives and old drives won't work directly under Win11.

My current solution adapting a SATA dock via USB3 works, but is a pain. Yes, I could go buy a new external optical drive to simplify that, but would be doing so for these two Y-type CDs only. Without exaggeration, I no longer use CDs or DVDs for any other purpose.

All this is akin to adapting a 78rpm turntable to a bluetooth sound system so I listen to 2 favourite songs. The media is obsolete. It's time to move on. Whether it's now or in a few years, these important pieces of data should be migrated to more current media or risk being lost forever.

Hence my original question. Given the copyright protection (corrupt sector detection?) written into the CDs, they cannot be copied or migrated without specialised software or more expertise than I have. I suspect the Y community is in the same situation. As a community, we must ultimately attend to this migration or risk losing it.

Regards,
Rob
R Ades

Correct Robert - there IS copy protection software in the CDs.

What I am about to write is deeply personal and I am sorry if it comes over that I am disappointed - I am.

With respect "it is time to move on" I currently have 24 copies of Let there be Ys, 8 copies of John Lawson/CAN May, and 31 MG YB manuals on CDs in stock that I have been holding at my personal cost since this project began. The profits from the sale of these go to help offset the not inconsiderable costs of running the IMGYTR that I also bear personally so that the resources of the website remain free of charges to users. I am saddened that you feel that I should accept that loss. As items run out the media is transitioning to USB thumb drives but again that cost of re-engineering the product transition and then inventory holding costs are again being taken directly by me and my family.

In addition to the hours I put in, your International Representatives also put in countless hours and personal expense and effort tracking down missing cars and offering personal advise and help too.

I guess you could ask why do we bother? Well the answer to that is that when it was founded we thought the IMGYTR was providing a service to MG Y Type owners. Maybe the answer to your question could also be applied to why do we bother with cars that are obsolete too?

Since the site launched there has been an opportunity to help defray the costs that I incur using the HOW TO HELP link on the main menu (see Contact us and How to Help). In summary I think I have received less than 6 donations through this portal totaling about $700US and a couple of personal cheques. Well you do the math - in a typical year I spend about $700 a year on the site not to mention the personal cost of buying old magazines and material and bringing them to you in my own personal time.

If someone else wants to step up and offer their services to take over running the IMGYTR and do a better job at their personal cost, please contact me.
Paul Barrow

Hello all, (This possibly falls in the too much info category, but indulge me.)
Paul, your cd's have been invaluable for me personally. The quality of the images is commendable, enabling me to enlarge and see details, even with my failing eyesight. I purchased a pair some time back as a gift for a fellow MG nut. He has to even maintain a PC with XP as its OS for lots of other software, so i don't anticipate he'll consider this any sort of a major problem.
Down the track when the industry moves on in its juggernaut way, trashing the quite adequate, for me, system I we have now, I'll happily buy a version on a USB stick and regard it as just another part of cost of "progress" . I have a draw not quite full of old dongles for program suites i used to use of yore.
It would cost $k's to replace them with today's versions, albeit better. So maybe some enterprising person, will build a PC with a suitably old architecture, but I am not holding my breath. (cf Vinyl records.)
Back in the 90's some seer called Bill Gates, said he could not foresee that a PC would need more than 2meg of ram.
So yes, on Robert's point, albeit not empathetically made perhaps, we will need a usb version in future, and it could be timely to look at an equitable way to do this. Regards and thanks.
K G Mills

Thank you for your input Ken.

My concern is how much more personal $ outlay is expected of me to place into holding inventory? The residual inventory of CDs that I have are from the original manufacturing order I placed for these in 2010 and have funded and invested in now in excess of 16 years. This is why there have been NO price increases since then.

Personal computers are exactly that - personal and are highly configurable and also open to unwitting manipulation by programs such as AV and Firewall software not to mention the requirement to stay on top of driver updates etc.

With that said, my computers here run Windows 11 and I have 3 external CD drives all of which work fine with all my CD (music and date) and DVD (video and data) I have here. While I have been happy to help people who have experienced issues running the CDs I cannot help if optical device drives are damaged or no longer compatible. When I "upgrade" I make sure that what I am "upgrading" to will be compatible with what I want to run. If it is not (i.e. the absence of CD drives on modern laptops) then I do not get rid of the old computer but keep it as a non-internet connected device

So, given that I have minimum order quantities on restocking, to finance conversion engineering to USB, writing off my past investment in current inventory and allowing for multiple years of holding USB inventory the costs work out to a selling price of $60 each USB with no margin left to contribute to helping run the IMGYTR

Is this acceptable? In the past when I have asked questions on the BBS about running projects the responses have been positive and I have then gone ahead into a production run ... and the follow through on orders from those who said they were interested has been nothing like the enthusiasm that was initially expressed. Again, these are real $ that can either be spent by me on either the IMGYTR or my family and if it was you making this decision, what would you do?

Paul Barrow

Hi all,

I feel somewhat misinterpreted and this thread has gone off on a tangent not really intended in my original comments.

I had no idea about the CD inventory Paul is holding and I'm sorry if I hit a nerve. That wasn't my intention. My comments were nothing to do with how the IMGYTR was funded. My comments were about the demise of CDs and technical obsolescence.

I purchased the CDs initially and was happy to do so. If they become available on a newer media, I would happy pay again (within reason). My sole point is that it's becoming increasingly harder to rely on old media and, as PC technology/standards go on, it'll only get harder. Imagine if this data was stored on 5.25" floppies! The analogy to old cars doesn't work, and I don't want to maintain a PC museum alongside my YT. Anyway, if we hope for a new generation to take over from us as we (inevitably) get too old (or obsolete) to be the custodians of these beautiful cars, we should give some thought to them accessing the history.

As for funding the IMGYTR, if there was a modest subscription I would pay that. If the CD and other historic data moved behind a subscription login, I would pay that. I feel that this financial issue has been conflated with a clear technical one. I suggest that financial support of IMGYTR shouldn't result in important data becoming lost through obsolescence.

I didn't mean to come across unempathetically. The financial undercurrent of all this has (frankly) been a surprise. Perhaps a new thread should be started to canvass a future financial model for IMGYTR that's sustainable. What I'm reading here now concerns me that sustainability goes well beyond the technology concern I had.

Regards,
Robert
R Ades

Paul has devoted decades to the IMGYTR and it's aims to share freely the information shared by all owners.

Additionally, he has done it all at some considerable financial outlay - all while working and family life taking it's toll.

The IMGYTR will never be a member pays club, but the reality is everything comes at a cost.

If you want this website and the IMGYTR to continue, consider making a small donation now & then - or buy a CD. I really don't know what will happen if Paul were to back away in the future.

Thanks

Tony Slattery
East Coast Australia Representative
International MG Y-Type Register
A L SLATTERY

This thread was discussed between 22/02/2026 and 03/03/2026

MG MG Y Type index

This thread is from the archives. Join the live MG MG Y Type BBS now