🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1b3025INN7je@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> an938@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (George II Lenzer) writes:
>	What are the differences between a CD player and a CD-ROM
>device?  Putting the SCSI interface and controller mechanisms
>aside, is the reading done in a similar fashion?

Pretty much.  Some of the CDROM readers can be used as CD players.

>BIG DUMB QUESTION:  How much work would be involved in trying to
>"convert" a CD player to a CD-ROM? ...

I can't answer authoritatively, but my gut reaction is "a lot".  For
one thing, you'd need to get at the raw bit stream, which may not be
readily accessible.  (CD players are built in huge volume, more than
enough to justify a lot of custom chips.)  For another, you'd have to
implement most of the error-correction stuff yourself, because CDROMs
have much more elaborate error detect/correct than CDs do.  (One wrong
bit on a CD is not going to spoil the music.)
-- 
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry