The earliest version of quicktime that I have is 1.5 and it needs system 7 and up, so that was out.

Vladimir's suggestion of bypassing the desktop rebuild worked. I can now use CDs on my system 6 Mac. The desktop manager extension also fits on the original install disk, I might even remember to use it the next time I do an install. BTW I tried this approach with a plextor 4x drive with the cdrom toolkit extension V2.3, and this also worked. I have not had the chance to try it on my Plus or my SE, but I imagine it would work.