iTunes apparently not reading CDs?

iMac, mid 2011, Optiarc DVD RW AD-5690H built in SuperDrive, Mt. Lion 10.8.5, iTunes 12.2.2.25

We like classical music; iTunes store has very little. Can get from other sources, but not everything is downloadable making physical CDs necessary.

Several months ago found that the drive would not read some music CDs - it either rejected them outright or told me that the disk is blank and available for recording. It would read others just fine. Now it simply rejects all of them except those that had been burned by me on an earlier computer but it still says they are blank.

Nothing is wrong with the CDs - they work in an older CD player that cannot be connected to the computer.

Apparently I have iTunes 7.7.1 somewhere on my computer, but that is leftover from a previous machine. It is dated 8/18//08; have not tried finding it to see if it would help.

We have a MacMini from around 2005 that has a drive. We do not use it. Its OS is obsolete (Tiger) and it has an older version of iTunes (of course).

Could it be a faulty drive?

Was the ability to use physical CDs removed from the latest iTunes update? Can’t find the CD button as an option to show in the top left though it is mentioned in an Apple knowledge base article dated 4/28/15 on the topic of importing songs from CDs.

Would there be any point in getting an external CD drive? If yes, are there any recommendations about which one to get?