It would boot
off any cdrom pretty much.  The problem came when I tried to
 do a restore from the cd's system image.  Instant screenfull of greek.
 The RRD40 was the only drive I could install vms off of. 
I used the different drives to install, too.  Have you tried a Plextor? 
 
This really sounds like the problem I had installing OpenVMS on my
VS4000/VLC.  I've got a 4x external CD-ROM that I bought new years ago for
my PowerBook 520c.  Everything loves this CD-ROM (including lots of VMS
systems), yet when I tried to install VMS on the VLC using it, I had
nothing but troubles.
                        Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
|                                  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                
http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |