What do you do with spare CD-ROM drives ? Over the past few years, I've collected a large number of spare computer parts - including cards, cables, and drives; all of them in perfectly working order. Some items become obsolete (such as ISA cards) and eventually find their way to the trash. CD-ROM drives are generally useful - it's usually possible to mount them in a PC if you have spare 5-1/4 inch bays and available IDE channels. The older slower drives are not too useful for data access but can still serve as dedicated audio playback devices.

While rumaging through my spare parts one day, I noticed that one spare CD-ROM drive had two buttons on its faceplate. Most CD-ROM drives have only a single "Eject" button. This drive had one button with icons for "Eject/Stop" and the other for "Play/Forward". Looking around, I saw that one of my DVD drives also had this extra button. What this means is that this drive can play audio CDs without the aid of a host CPU. In other words, this drive is also a stand-alone CD player. Spare CD-ROM drives that collect dust have little use; but spare CD players are always useful to someone who has a speaker building hobby ! :)