Hey, sorry for the newbie question... can the quality of one's CD-ROM drive affect the quality/fidelity of the digital audio file that is ripped from a CD? (using EAC)

Yes, but I've only seen it happen with really, really old, possibly broken CD-Rom drives... Ripping a CD in my laptop, for example, produces tracks that alternate from one channel to another and have random pops in them. Any rather new drive should be fine, as far as I know.