Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #02449



To: Matt Procopation proc@home.com, beam beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Sean Rigter rigter@cafe.net
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 18:51:20 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Update on disassemblin' CD-ROM drives



Hi Matt,

I guess you wouldn't mind if I went down to PC Galore and snapped up a
few of those $5 treasures. Any matched pairs?

BTW I bought that SciFi mag we were discussing earlier at a large used
book store, now long gone, near the north west corner of 4th and
Macdonald in Vancouver. Strange world isn't it!

FYI RP Electronics is just a few blocks east on 4th and on the filing
cabinet against the back wall you will find a small drawer cabinet with
assorted IC chips including those hard to get 74AC245 motor drivers for
$0.50 ea.

And here's another tip if you're into SRAM: I picked up some defunct
Fujitsu IDE (240M) HDs from the freeby bin at PC Galore, lo and behold,
they have a SMD 512Kx8 static RAM chip on the controller board, that's
4Mbits of storage for my "all CMOS solar powered EAZY80 CPU" controller
with 50uA battery backup.

regards

wilf

Matt Procopation wrote:
>
> I'd like to thank everyone who replied when I asked what they found
> inside CD-ROM drives. So far in my research, I've taken apart three
> of the things, with mixed results. Motorwise, I've found-
>
> 2 Stepper motors (useless for my purposes), that were used for
> spinning the cds
> 3 15mm diameter x 25mm long dc motors, which were moving the
> laser/lens assembly back and forth
> 3 25mm diameter x ~13mm long dc motors (similar to cassette
> player motors), 2 of which were from the eject assemblies, and the
> other was a spinner
> 1 small pager-motor sized motor that ran the third eject mechanism

---8<--- snip

> I've been picking old drives up from a store that sells old
> computers on consignment (near 4th and macdonald, in Vancouver)
> for about 5 bucks (cdn) apiece. I figure it's a decent deal, and you're
> guaranteed at least two motors that're good enough for a symet or
> photovore.
> Plus it's sort of fun guessing what kind of motors you're gonna get
> once you open the sucker up :)

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