Hi all. So, my tinkering brain got me thinking I could somehow use an Arduino to be the brain controlling an old (2005) CD ROM disc drive from my expired PC and I'm searching for some ideas on how to start. I have a couple Arduino Unos, wires and breadboards.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Any thoughts?
Think of something else to do?
How do you expect to control the IDE 40 pin parallel port with a Uno's 20 pins?
Remember that many of the signals have to be present at the same time (parallel!) and the timing between most signals is critical.
I second AWOL's comment. You'd be better off trying to hack a CD walkman.
A modern SATA drive might be easier, but I doubt it.
I agree that this would be crazy-difficult and uneconomical since you can buy a DVD player (which also plays CDs) for about $30 USD.
Older CD ROM drives had analog audio outputs. That would simplify the audio output side of things. If yours doesn't, you'll need to add a high quality stereo DAC.
On the software/interface side, you might able to learn how the drive interface works by digging into the Linux code or maybe the MSDN website. I also found [u]this website[/u]
I once fitted an old CD ROM drive in to a car I once owned.
I just built a 12V and 5V voltage regulator circuit, and connected it using a red, yellow and black power lead salvaged from a scrapped computer power supply,
The Audio output went to one of those coupling devices that fit into the cassette player of the car radio. (I was going to upgrade to an FM transmitter, but never got round to it).
No connections to the IDE 40 pin connector were necessary to enable it to operate, i just used the front panel play / next track buttons.
A major drawback was that you always had to start at track 1. If you wanted to play another track you had to count the number of times you had to press the next track button.
I have just realised that most CD ROM drives don't have front panel play/next track buttons anymore.
Without them you would need to used the 40 pin IDE interface.
I looked into the possibility of controlling mine via the IDE interface, but concluded it was a lot of effort for little gain.
This document will tell you how to get an ATA CD-ROM drive to play audio:
It's only about 200 pages.