Has anyone beside me had a problem connecting a cd rom drive to the new M3 iMac?

I have tried everything suggested and more. Here is what I posted under the heading "WARNING on new iMAC M3"

If anyone can prove support wrong, I would love too hear it!!

f you are thinking about buying a new M3 iMac, think carefully if you use an external CD-ROM drive.

Apple in their infinite wisdom has declared CD's "old technology" and will no longer support CD drives.

I learned this after trying to connect a drive to my four day old M3 iMac. Called support and chased it up to the third level over the course of two days and was told the above. The advice given was to get a windows computer or an older iMac and copy everything to an external hard drive and download to the new iMac.

For me this is dozens of discs containing business records, tax records, correspondence etc, etc.

This is NOT ACCEPTABLE! I am ready to take this thing back and try to buy an older Mac. Da_m, I dont want to go back to windows!!