Do It Yourself CD Changer

SuperDuG writes "This is a true homebrew solution to saving a few bucks when it comes to cd changers. And to make it even better the whole setup is controlled by none other than linux. Seems like a nice setup to do batch burns without user interaction. Source is provided if you wanted to build your own." Not sure if this is very practical, or even if it would be cheaper than buying a changer, but it sure looks cool.

Comments

Other goodies

[vasqzr]

Be sure to check out the rest of his page. Fun stuff.

Color Coding

[Medievalist]

From the article:

Luckily, the cable manufacturer followed the black - brown - red - yellow - green - blue - violet colour numbering convention, so I didn't have to probe around with the ohmmeter too much

In the days of the dinosaurs, when I was in 6th grade, we learned the mnemonic "BLack Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly" which reduces to black - brown - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - violet - grey - white.

They probably don't teach that particular bit of doggerel any more...

Re:Color Coding

[axis-techno-geek]

No, it is just more "Politically Correct" now:

Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Vilot Gives Willingly, sometimes for Gold, some times for Silver, and sometime for No Charge at all.

Value:

• Black - 0
• 
  Brown - 1
  Red - 2
  Orange - 3
  Yellow - 4
  Green - 5
  Blue - 6
  Violet - 7
  Gray - 8
  White - 9
  

Tolerance:

• Gold - 5%
• 
  Silver - 10%
  None - 20%
  

color1 + color 2 * ( 10 ^ color3 )
color4 - Tolerance

Not really a new idea

[scharkalvin]

Diskmakers has a similar gizmo in their catalog that is used for burning CD-R's. It picks up blank cd from an input stack, drops it into the open tray of the drive, then picks up the burned cd and drops it into the dot matrix printer to print the label on the disk (printable cd's) then picks the disk up out of the printer and drops it onto the output stack. Of course their gizmo isn't made of Wood. (http://www.discmakers.com/hardware/)

Re:Usefull for a small inde band.

[foo fighter]

Do a Google search for CD Duplicator.

You can get a brand-new autoloading CD Duplicator (either attached to your PC or standalone) for $1500. It will also print and attach the labels.

You can probably find something used on eBay.

It seems to me that $1500 - $2000 is a worthwhile investment if it 1) avoids pissed off fans whose CDs won't play because of errors caused doing this by hand, 2) saves hours wasted in front of a PC, and 3) gives a pro-quality image to the band.

Proper way to do a batch burn

[Megor1]

If you want to do batch burns, get a Composer Max, the thing burns 400 CDs(and even DVDS) without user interaction!

Not only is he a true hacker...

[WebCowboy]

...he is also a very talented and prolific one:

1. Rather than buy a printer for his C64 back in the day, he elected to build a home made plotter and make several improvements along the way. It's quite impressive!

2. Before digital imaging was even remotely on the minds of personal computer users, he constructed a slow but functional low-res scanner That has to be a hallmark of a true hacker--his creations may not be practical and are of limited use, but they are fascinating and forward thinking.

3. Sometimes hacks really do save money, like this multi-megapixel digital camera made from a cheap $100 scanner at a time when most decent digital cameras cost 10 times that much. Sure, it took 30 seconds to take a pic, but it served the purpose for non-action photography and when motion was involved it could produce some interesting effects.

(bows down) I'm not worthy....