Yeah but the few tutorials I've checked out so far use Connectivity kits and probes and what have you. Would it be possible to just remove the drive and hook it up to my desktop computer or are those extra gadgets absolutely necessary?
For burning discs, it seems that Verbatim DVD+R seems to be the brand of choice for burning, and make sure to do it at a low speed to prevent errors. Apparently some of them require you to burn outside the standard capacity of a DVD as well, which isn't possible with all drives, but there is a freeware program that unlocks dvd capacity called Burnermax. This is only stuff I've read though, so I haven't tried it myself and cannot guarantee anything.