can i convert an old computer cd-rom into something useful?

[News]

hi all

do you think i can convert an old CD-rom. 10X to some external cd player?
thanks in advance

 

[Ian Stirling]

hi all

do you think i can convert an old CD-rom. 10X to some external cd player?
thanks in advance

In theory yes.
In practice, it requires quite a lot of custom electronics.
New CD players are almost free.

 

[hamilton]

http://jsno.leal.com.au/proj_micro/onhold_r2.html

 

[Mark Zenier]

hi all

do you think i can convert an old CD-rom. 10X to some external cd player?
thanks in advance

Power it up without an interface cable and listen on the headphone jack.
Some of them will run standalone as audio players using the front panel
buttons.

Mark Zenier [email protected] Washington State resident

 

[Chaos Master]

In an arcane spellbook written by the priests, labeled 'Posts of
sci.electronics.design' I found a message from News[[email protected]]:

hi all

do you think i can convert an old CD-rom. 10X to some external cd player?
thanks in advance

You can adapt it to work as a car CD player. IIRC you need a 7805 regulator
mounted to a heatsink, to regulate the voltage from the car battery. And a set
of headphones to listen to it. Poor excuse for a car CD player, but nobody will
want to steal it.

 

[Kalman Rubinson]

In an arcane spellbook written by the priests, labeled 'Posts of
sci.electronics.design' I found a message from News[[email protected]]:

hi all

do you think i can convert an old CD-rom. 10X to some external cd player?
thanks in advance

You can adapt it to work as a car CD player. IIRC you need a 7805 regulator
mounted to a heatsink, to regulate the voltage from the car battery. And a set
of headphones to listen to it. Poor excuse for a car CD player, but nobody will
want to steal it.

USefulness depends on whether it has any effective controls. Adding
those, rather than a voltage regulator, is the catch.

Kal

 

[YD]

hi all

do you think i can convert an old CD-rom. 10X to some external cd player?
thanks in advance

Yes you can. Feed it +12 and +5 volts from regulators, take the audio
either from the phone jack in the front or the analog output in the
back. I have the latter setup in my lab feeding a TDA2005 and a couple
of shelf speakers. Not high quality nor anything but it's for casual
listening anyway, the good stuff's upstairs. Use the front panel
buttons for playing, skipping and backtracking. There's no visual
indication of current track but I don't care about that. The player's
a junked unit where the IDE interface conked out but is otherwise
working, a friend gave me a boxful so I just tested them all and found
a few that'd still play audio CD's.

- YD.

 

[Chaos Master]

In an arcane spellbook written by the priests, labeled 'Posts of
sci.electronics.design' I found a message from Kalman Rubinson[[email protected]]:

USefulness depends on whether it has any effective controls. Adding
those, rather than a voltage regulator, is the catch.

Some drives, made by Creative, IIRC, had play/pause/prev track/next track
controls - which makes them quite useful for this purpose. My current drive (a
Liteon) has only play, next track and stop.
And you can always look at www.mp3projects.com, to find car MP3 player projects
that use CD-ROM drives.

 

[Bevered]

mine is a pioneer . old 10x, it doesnt have any (eject, volume controls
only) controls, and i know mp3 players would cost me less effort and money
than makin this, but iam an elecronic eng. student and you know.. wana try
anythng!

 

[YD]

mine is a pioneer . old 10x, it doesnt have any (eject, volume controls
only) controls, and i know mp3 players would cost me less effort and money
than makin this, but iam an elecronic eng. student and you know.. wana try
anythng!

Oh well, you're SOL then. Mine's a Creative sumthing with play, skip,
backtrack, etc. I wired them up for a lark and was quite surprised
that some of them still worked for audio. Try a computer repair shop,
they'll probably be happy to hand you an armful of the things. Easier
than proper disposal. Funny thing is, it takes a lot more banging than
my Discman before skipping, maybe I'll try it in the car.

- YD.