Valve is working to add external disc drives support to their Steam Frame handheld, in response to a user request on the Steam forums. This change is significant because it enables users to install physical media and access older games that aren't distributed digitally, like Need for Speed: Carbon. The addition caters to the user base with physical media or older games not present in the digital storefront.
Manual kernel patch enables physical media installation on the handheld
This feature is the result of a particular Steam forum post in which a user requested that Valve make it possible to use an external CD-ROM drive. The response to this request came from a Valve employee gaberowe. They replied to the forum post stating that they will investigate the issue. This quick addition shows Valve's capabilities to accommodate user requests for hardware compatibility on the Steam Frame.
The technical solution was done by Gabe Rowe, the developer. Rowe made a commit to their deckard-linux-no-oopsies kernel repository. The commit enables the usage of an existing Linux kernel function to receive input from a disc drive.
Valve made it clear that official and complete disc drive support won't be in the next immediate update. Users will have to manually install the modified kernel to use this feature today.
Since it's not part of the standard SteamOS update, users will have to manually install a modified kernel to use this feature, which means users have to have some technical knowledge. Also, the change was made within less than ten minutes of the forum reply, showing how quickly it was developed internally. The fact that it's not an automatic addition means users cannot plug in their drive and expect to just go and play. It's essentially just a technical patch for advanced users in this update, not a full, finished and consumer-ready feature.
Source: IXBT
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