New development. Since the behavior of the CD drive was very inconsistent, and booting behavior was obviously random, I found an old IDE DVD drive lying around in the basement.
I properly installed it, replacing the original, and everything now works as intended.
Intermittent faults are the worst. What a painful journey it was.

Now the question is: Am I going to be able to make use of this new (to me) environment in 2024.

[ Edited by Kidon 14.09.2024 - 16:04 ]