Slashdot Mirror
CD-ROM Drives that Can Be Used as Standalone Players?
An anonymous reader asks: "I am using an older, standalone CD-ROM drive as my audio CD player in my sound system. It is a NEC 4X SCSI in a small case with power supply. The case outputs very clean analog audio, great headphone output and a SPDIF coax link which plugs directly into my receiver. It works great standalone, it has a complete front panel, ie backlit LCD display, stop, play, pause, next and previous track buttons. But it doesn't read CD-RW, it uses a caddy and it heats up the CDs quite a bit. I know that all recent CD-ROM drives have only the eject button, not all of them output SPDIF (and with DRM who knows what the future holds) and who knows if they will work with only the power connected? Which CD-ROM drives, old or new, support being used standalone, have a decent set of front panel controls (at least a play and a skip button) and output SPDIF?" Generally for this type of purpose, I'd use a regular old portable CD player, but these generally do not output to SPDIF, either. Has anyone managed to find decent examples of either piece of hardware?
I've got this great little thngy I use to play my CDs. The case outputs very clean analog audio, great headphone output and a SPDIF coax link which plugs directly into my receiver. It works great standalone, it has a complete front panel, ie backlit LCD display, stop, play, pause, next and previous track buttons. It has a cabeled remote, plays CD-RWs wonderfully, and dosen't heat up. It can run directly with only a power supply, and can even run without the power supply if needed!
Know what? It's a Sony D-EJ815 Discman.
Cue The Sun...
Many moons ago, in the dark ages, I obtained a semi-broken iNFRA54 creative cd rom drive. It has
1) Earphones output
2) volume (up/down buttons)
3) Remote with numbered buttons etc.
4) play/next/rewind/prev buttons
5) Stop/eject button
6) Mode button (?)
7) Windows software which enables the remote to be a mouse etc.
On the back is a normal large 12V/5V/GND power socket, IDE port, master/slave jumper, analog audio out and didgatl audio out (2 pin cable thing).
The thing the laser sits on and moves kept sticking whenthe case was on though, but worked ok with the case off.
As mentioned elsewhere, a cheap AT power supply would work it great, I bet ebay as a few. Dunno if the digital out is the same as a coaxial digital out on DVD's and tuners etc.