If the rest of the system's not too old, I'd not be worried about the BIOS.  My old ECS K7VTA3 8.0 handled it fine with the original, probably 2 year old, BIOS.

 

SATA has yet to show any benefits for optical drives; they don't come close to filling out the performance celings of the old parallel IDE specs (my new DVD burner is still only DMA-33 compatible), so the only reason to transition is cultlike worship of the "Serial is better" mindset.

 

I got a NEC 3520A from Newegg for about USD 53 delivered; nice burner but comes with *nothing* but a antistatic bag.  No software for Windows, no blank disc to test with.