Boot from USB CD-ROM problem

I bought a cheap external slimline CD-ROM that gets plugged in the USB slot. Assuming that I should be able to boot normal bootable CDs from it, so I can use my USB sticks for other purposes. However, the darn thing doesn't boot. Not in the AA1, not in other PCs. It works fine if I use it from within the OS, it just doesn't boot.
Dumb question: I should be able to boot the same CDs from that drive as I can from internal CD drives, right? Or do I need to do something special with the CD to make it boot from an external CD-ROM? Or does it work with some CD-ROM drives, but not with others? (It's a TEAC something.)

 

if you press F12, what do you see for bootable devices? I'm assuming you have the F12 hotkey enabled for boot device selection on the AAO.

 

Sure, the selection of booting devices isn't the problem. It's shown as USB HDD: Teac CD-224-something or so. When I boot from it on the AA1 it just spins up, locks the tray (so I can't open it) and the screen stays blank (it's lit, but no text/content). If I boot from it on another machine it doesn't turn up as "USB HDD", but just as another boot device [Teac CD-224]. I guess that's just a matter of BIOS, obviously the one in the AA1 is the newest BIOS I have in one of my machines. On other machines it eventually moves on to boot from another boot source. On the AA1 it just stays on that blank screen. Probably also a matter of BIOS.
The point is, should I be able to boot or not? I've never used an external USB CD-ROM before. My notebooks so far have had internal drives and on other PCs there's no problem to temporarily add an IDE CD or DVD drive for the initial setup of the OS if it's lacking an internal one.
Booting from USB stick is not a problem. I installed Fedora 10 and Windows 7 this way. So, is this drive likely broken in some way or are there drives out there that definitely don't boot this way?

 

You should be able to. Have you tried a different bootable cd?

I can boot from my LG just fine.

 

I wonder if my problem got to do with the fact that the CD-ROM shows up as USB-HDD? I checked the boot options I have in the BIOS and there is USB-FDD, USB-HDD and USB-CD-ROM. One would assume that a CD-ROM should show up as, well, a USB-CD-ROM - and not as USB-HDD.
If you use F12 with your LG attached, as what does it show up? USB-HDD or USB-CD-ROM?

 

Mine shows as usb-cdrom. That is odd that it shows up as an HDD...

 

Thanks. I think that confirms my suspicion that the problem is with the USB drive.