shortest optical drive

Im looking for a very short drive for a mod im working on. I currently have a Lite-on 16x dvd which is 170mm but its about 10/20mm too long, is there any shorter drives out there or am i stuck with this one?

 

use a laptop cd-drive, they are smaller in length and height than standard drive.

 

It really needs to be a normal cd-rom in order to get my mod to look like a mac!

 

I had the same problem with my htpc build. As far as I was able to tell, 170mm
is about as short as an optical drive gets without going lappie.

This is how I solved the problem

 

or you could have just desoldered the cap and wired it on instead.

 

looks like he cut the corner off the drive.

 

Will it still work ok with a hole in it?



as you can see ill have to chop quite a fair bit off!

 

thats the corner of the Lite-on dvd ill need to mod, is there anything people think i should not cut cause im going to have to cut the board aswell as the rom casing!

 

I can see the pic im saying it would have been easier to desolder a cap then cutting away at a dvd drive casing.

 

on the screen savers not to lang ago they reviewed a dvd-r that was super short from a no-name companly for like $80 and they loved it, maybe you could find it on there site or at bestbuy, srry i cant help more buy have a look if any stores have display modles

 

I ment that some of the drive went below the Pbc so he had to cut some of it and looks to me to be simpler if he cut cround the cap to.

 

Bindibadgi wrote:

That wouldn't have worked, there are a couple of SMD devices in the same part
of the TV-card.

I was lucky. All that was in the way of the card were the digital audio connector
& those 6 pins that are never used or labelled on any optical drive. Anyone know
what they're for? So I desoldered the pins, & cut the hole in the DVD.

Besides, I had 2 choices, cut a hole in a £30 DVD drive, or butcher a £130 TV card.

 

lite-on 4x dvd burners are really short

 

Ah ok

I was thinking £30 video card, £50 DVDRW or something. I can see the pcb, it just looked like a lot of butchering that's all

 

I think all the lite-ons are 170mm

Looks like im gonna have to dremel it

 

Lite on's are the shortest around I think.

 

The one I "modded" is labelled as "JVC Lite-on" and is 170mm long. I know the
cuts look a bit ghetto in the pic, but will be neatened before I publish the
project log.

My original plan was to fit my new Sony DRU-700A Dual layer DVDRW, which
is also 170mm long, but I didn't want to cut into a £150 drive!

The Sony ended up in my main machine, which is the one in my sig below.