This Is my half ass attempt to turn a standard optical drive into a top loading drive. Im getting bored, so I _Had_ to do something, I figured I should try something new, something I havent seen before. Looking arround, I have seen a lot of kick ass things, but nothing like this, If someone has seen this type of thing before, let me know. The Idea here is to take a small perfectly functional optical drive, and make it so the the CD loads from the top, Like most CD players. This is just a prototype type of thing, so its not really going to look pretty. Some pics of my progress This is an old drive, I will be using its case because its nice and clean on the inside, and I dont want to screw up the other case if I decide to return the drive back to normal. hinges installed, kind of wish I would have waited so I would know where I wanted them, but they are glued into place really really good, and wont budge. I grinded down the 4 screws that came up from the bottom, and covered all the metal surface with electrical tape. The drive sat in crooked, so I sanded down the circled areas as far as I could. now the drive sits nice and rests perfectly in place. Here is how everything sits, I had a spare drive bay cover sitting arround, Il use it for the front of this. Its a damn near perfect fit, once down, it takes a bit of effort to get the drive out. I Have the drive placed in the back so that I can make use of the cut made for the IDE/power connection. I needed to make a minor adjustment to ensure that there is enough room, but thats ok, it was an easy cut. Even though the drive fits snugly in place I decited to place a little L bracket to keep it from moving foward over time. In case you guys dont know, the actual spinning thing, and disk reader raise and lower when the tray opens and closes (to pick up and set down the CD on the tray). I'm not going to be using this feature, because the disk will be placed where it needs to be by hand. The circled part is the piece that ties the tray mech to the raising/lowering function. I'll need to remove it. Pictured is the lifting/lowering piece, without it, the drive just flops down, I needed to make a replacement that holds the device in a fixed location. Pictured above is my hand crafted replacement, Just the tip of a drive tray, cut so it fits. Here is the piece from above mounted in place. I drilled two small holes on the sides, and forced a screw through them. Lucky me, when the screw went through it threaded the hole and now holds itself in place. This is good, because it would have been a pain in the ass to put a nut or something on the end. I started making the lid, took two attempts, but I got a lid made. Its not done though, as you can see, I still have a lot of work to do on the top. Here you can see the feet, and the lid. I have a mouse button on the front that will be the open button, tapping anywhere on the top clicks the button and cause whatever to happen to release the top. What do you guys think?
well it took me quite a while to realise what you were trying to do. But from what I can make out, you are making it open like the old playstation did. This is quite a cool mod, but it would have to be mounted very close to the top of the case to get it to open properly through a hole on the top.
for now, this will sit on top of the case, which is why I took feet from a nes advantage pad and glued them to the bottom of the drive.
I actually thought about suggesting this about a week ago... it brought to mind (to me) an old record player that I grew up with in my parents' house (I'm pretty sure they still have it!). Very cool, though it'd be great if you could take some bondo and clean up the exposed bits (I realize you're not done yet)
I got the Idea when someone asked about buying one. I thought "that shouldnt be too hard" so I decited to give it a try
there are alot of cases that ship with top loading cd drives now, but a home made one is far more impressive.
yeah, but those are external drives right? Maybe I can snag a cheap one from ebay to mess with if my first attempt dies
My only question is what is going to hold the cd down. With normal slot loading cd drives, there is a spinning clamp thing that holds the cd in place. With Discman, the cd clips in place. With some top loading thinks, like stereos, they have the spinning clamp thing in the lid. Is that what you are doing? If not, maybe you could steal a clicky thing from a Discman. With what you have right now, I don’t see anything that will hold the cd to the motor. The cd has to be held quite flat though so that the laser can focus and the drive knows how fast the cd is spinning. I hope you can get it working though, I’ll keep watching this thread.
Well, actually that is the part I am working on now. At first I was going to use a piece from an old drive (that can be seen on the bottom right corner of the first pic), but that proved to be too noisy for my liking. Then I tried just not having anything, that works fine as long as the drive is sitting still, one bump the the cd started to bounce all over inside the drive. Now I am working on something, I'll post if it turns out ok.
Very cool! I was hoping to snag a broken top loading cd player or portable stereo, and pulling it apart to see how it works and all, perhaps give me some insight into how this can be done. Would love to see any updates you might have! Fenriswulf
