At 11:45 PM 10/16/96 +0000, you wrote:
>Hello members of the piclist,
>
>I am wondering if it is possible to use one of those ATAPI CD-ROM
>drives (usually used in PCs) as a stand-alone audio-CD-player,
>controlled by a PIC. I know that some CD-ROM drives play audio
>totally stand-alone by pressing a button on the front panel but that
>is far away from the flexibility and possibilities I have in mind.

I don't see why not.  There are quite a few problems tho.

1) you have to get the IDE spec (the 40 pin cable) so that you can
communicate with the CD-ROM drive (there was some talk about IDE drives on
this list a while ago).

2) you would have to figure out how mscdex.exe works (ie. you need the low
level routines to communicate with the drive to initiate the audio controls).

3) You have to fit all this code into a PIC some how. (the 16c84 cause it
has eeprom to store playlists, etc...)

It sounds like a great leaning project (semi-portable CD - player) since
there is no shortage of 1X drives cost shouldn't be too much of a problem.

MD


--
Martin Darwin   a.k.a Rambo (see you at quake.mgl.ca)
s721099@uottawa.ca             3rd year Computer Engineering
http://aix2.uottawa.ca/~s721099         University of Ottawa