I'd second the vote for SCSI over IDE, but then as mentioned above, you'd need some kind of SCSI adapter (either via accelerator card or PCMCIA). Haven't looked lately but a year or so back I could buy external SCSI CD drives on ebay all day long for under $5. 
And then you're stuck with an old CD Rom drive. Mechanical devices wear over time when used, and you have no way of knowing how much such a drive was used (unless you can get NOS drives, of course). Same goes for hard drives. Always buy new if possible.
New IDE DVD re-writers can be connected to the A1200's internal IDE port. Just use IdeFix software. I have a Samsung 22 speed DVD re-writer. Cost me 22 euros, and burning both CDs and DVDs works properly.