Mini Drives for Mini-CDs?

fist_187 asks: "i'm working on a semi-portable MP3 player project, and would like to include a CD-ROM drive in my setup, but a full size drive is a little bigger than I'd like. so, I thought about using a drive designed for mini-CDs...but I can't find any! I know that there are several MP3 portables that use mini-CDs, but does someone know where to find the drives themselves (preferably in a USB or IDE variety)? The only thing I've been able to find, after some searching, is the Imation RipGO!, but that's already a player... defeating the purpose of building from scratch in the first place. Does anyone have advice on where to look?"

Comments

Re:I've been looking for these, too.

[Glonoinha]

CompactFlash is getting cheap. Like $20 for 32M, $25 for 64M, $35-40 for 128M, $60-70 for 256M

Get a CompactFlash reader. They come standard in a lot of new multimedia machines, are available as external units via USB, and I think are available as drive bay units as well.

You can also put a PCMCIA reader (standard on laptops) in a slot bay and use a CompactFlash to PCMCIA adapter (adapter is a PCMCIA card you slide the CompactFlash into, costs about $10 - $20.)

Granted the media is a little more than mini-CDs but if you are not sending out updates all the time it isn't that expensive (plus with a CF-IDE adapter you can actually boot from it like a hard drive - not unlike a CD come to think of it)

Re:I've been looking for these, too.

[ag144]

You should try this Google search, particularly the Phillips link:

+small +"form factor" +"optical drive"

--
Allen Gray

Re:And the problem is...

[fist_187]

well, i was really just asking if such products existed... the project itself is another computer-in-car concept, just for fun. the intent is to somehow work the components into the dashboard. here's the reasoning behind it: hard drives are subject to vibration. flash drives have expensive media, and i would need to buy 2 (one for the car, one for me). a regular cd drive would be a little big for the dash. but, the media is cheap and mini cds would be small enough to work into the dashboard.

if you can think of a better combination of durability, compactness, and low price, let me know...

Forget mini-cd's!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get hold of sony's parts dept and obtain a vaio mini-disc data drive :)

That way, you can store data, import mini-discs and anything else you want. Mini-discs are small enough for what you are seeking.