CD-ROM does not appear on desktop, macOS 10.5.7

Question

When I pop a CD-ROM into the drive of my MacBook Pro, It spins up, I hear it, but no icon appears on the desktop. (I think it's 10.5.7; actually not sure how to verify this on Mac, but I think I saw a 10.5.7 flash by somewhere).

In the finder preferences, I have "Show these items on the Desktop" set to show HDs, External Disks, and CDs, DVDs, and iPods. All three of those are checked. I do see the internal HD on the desktop.

In Disk utility I can see the CD/DVD hardware. It says "MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-857E...". From Disk Utility I can eject the drive.

But in Finder, there is never a CD/DVD listed under "Devices". When I insert a disk, nothing happens, I cannot see it. I also cannot boot from bootable CD-ROMs by holding C down.

Suggestions?

I am not very experienced with macOS; I have used Windows for years.

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EDIT Two updates:

1. I saw this article on support.apple.com, and modified the hostconfig appropriately. It did not have the AUTODISKMOUNT entry, so I added one, rebooted. Same behavior. It does not see the CDROM in Finder, does not mount it on desktop.

2. I put an old manufactured CD-ROM into the drive, and voila! it showed up on the desktop. The CD that does not appear is a GNome Partition Editor Live CD, which I guess is based on debian. That CD boots in other (non-Mac) PCs. I want to use this to adjust the Bootcamp partition.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

Make sure that CD,DVDs checked in Finer preferences

Answer 2

Your drive lens might be gone have you tried it with another disc? to verify if there's a disc problem. You'll find that the Mac drives are a bit picker then pc dvd/cd drives they don't like certain disc brand. The other possible reason could be the cable between the drive and the board it might be loose or bad but in most case I would say the drive they tend to fail more commonly then pcs dvd/cd. Hope that helps.