Has anyone ever done this? I have a car radio which is able to play a CD-R full of MP3s. What if I wanted to replace the CD-ROM drive with a DVD-ROM drive? What is involved? My current thinking is that I'd have to have the correct interface connection to the main receiver, and just make sure I can fit the drive (even if that's not possible I can store the drive somewhere else).
Hey !
The interface must be correct, and the host embedded computer must be able to support the file system. The file system of a CD (ISO 9660 with Joliet) and that of a DVD (MicroUDF) are different in nature, so in addition to the correct interface and housing, you need to take this into consideration.
I don't know if it's possible to format a DVD to follow to ISO 9660 standard. If it is, then it would ensure that the radio computer can read your discs.
Regards, Antti Keskinen
In Nero Burning ROM, there is the option to burn a DVD with ISO/Joliet. So in theory as long as the interface is correct, it would work (since we know the receiver can already read a CD in ISO/Joliet)? Now say I have a DVD drive that is IDE (normal pc-based drive). I can already tell that the existing CD-ROM connection on this receiver is not IDE. I don't know what it is, but it's very small in comparison to IDE. It's a 20 pin cable (E188165 was written on it: found this pdf:
Thanks.
You can't do this. The car CD player has on-board servo control logic. It is designed to interface to a CD mechanism, not a CD-ROM drive. The FFC you're looking at carries raw servo control signals and unprocessed data (there's at most a preamplifier on the carriage). Although a DVD mechanism is similar, it is not the same. The data rates and error correction are also totally different on a DVD. The project you need to carry out is "Build, from scratch, a DVD-Audio player that fits behind your car's CD bezel".
How would I go about doing this? I don't really know anything about embedded systems [yet], but I think this would be a good project to do in order for me to start understanding how this field works.
While I don't know much about the audio formats they support, in dash DVD video/audio/receiver units start at about $300. These are normally hooked to a monitor somewhere in the car, but they also play CDs, and I would guess, audio DVDs. I doubt there are any that *don't* play MP3s. I would not be surprised if these were usable as straight audio devices by the simple expedient of not attaching them to a monitor. Valor, Pioneer and Panasonic (and others) all make models.
And I really don't think this would be a good first project... It would be a lot cheaper, faster and more reliable to just epoxy a laptop to your dash. And it would probably look better too... ;-)
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