Hello Got some new gear and started rebuilding my computer a little while ago. At the end of it all I was left over with an old CD-ROM drive. I thought, "Hey I have an idea!" I'll hook up the drive to an old power supply I have kicking around and use it as a CD player! It seemed good in theory. I put in an audio CD (Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park? and plugged in the earphones and turned up the volume knob and waited. Nothing. There's no other contols exept the eject button, headphone jack, and volume knob. I also tried hooking another pair of earphones and some speakers, still no luck. Just to see I put it in the computer and managed to play the CD in Media Player through the monitor speakers. Tried the headphone feature now connected to the computer and still didnt work. So I pull out my CD-Writer with an exteral headphone jack and repeated all the above with it, still silent. AND to make darn sure I even tried another CD. Is there something I'm doing wrong here? I've never bothered to use the headphone feature before, nor do I have any owners manuals. I normaly buy my parts used. Any imput would be apriciated.
I thought I'd need a sound card too at first. Apparently it doesnt......? According to a few websites I've been to, it doesn't need a sound card for CD audio. Here's the link: How to Transform a CD-ROM Drive into a Car CD Player | Hardware Secrets Apparently ther'es a video here but I couldn't listen to it becuase I have no speakers on this computer Homemade CD Player or Stand Alone CD-ROM drive
It works. Ok... I figured it out and got it working. I have a friend who gave me a CD-ROM drive with no earphone jack or anything, just an eject switch (see pics). I popped the back of and noted the circut board for the front panel had a spot for another switch labeled "PLAY". So I glued a switch on the outside of the front an soldered two wires from the circut board to the switch. Next, I took the proper cable that normaly ran from the "AUDIO OUT" on the back of the drive, and spliced it to have an end for a headphone jack. I hooked an old power supply to the power port on the CD drive, put in a speaker to the headphone jack, put in a CD and hit play. It works. I just hit the play switch to skip tracks, eject switch once to stop, twice to eject the disk. I put pictures in for anyone who cares. It actually works well, consitering the CD-ROM drive is from November 1998. lol:chk:
