CD/DVD Jukebox
 

I figured that it would be an interesting project to somehow merge a cd changer with a simple ide dvd-rom drive, so that right next to my pc would be the whole cd and dvd library. It would not be as complex as this:

http://www.digitallyunique.net/digit...ue/039706.html

which is a cool $1800 because it wants be networked. Neither would it be this:

http://www.daveburroughs.com/discmanager.html

which is just a pc controlling a cd changer through a hacked ir device, though such a hack could allow for pc controlled changing.

My question for you is whether anyone has considered this before, and if so, the potential difficulties.

I thought about a similar project many, many years ago, but it was to put my music CDs "on-line". I was going to re-use a couple of dot matrix printer mechanism for the drive.

A few years later, I came across an IT project which required a massive amount of storage, and found an HP CD-RW "jukebox", allowing the small group of users to have a huge number of docs on-line.

It was about the size of a refrigerator, and cost in excess of $30'000.

Someone at OCAU presented a homemade jukebox (for music) very much like what I wanted to build. I believe he made a commercial venture out of it.


Difficulties? The only real difficulty is making sure that the disc is picked up and dropped off exactly where it needs to be. Anything else is relatively simple, unless you want to program your own interface, because then you have to deal with the time delay in swapping out discs, but that's not too hard.

Otherwise, you probably want to keep it compact, so a square/rectangular box would be preferable, but a circular one may facilitate some of the potential issues with the drive/load mechanism.