Converting a Car Casette Player to a Stereo Mini Plug Input

[SSKillingsworth]

Hello,

I've recently been tinkering with my car stereo. The tape player was broken when I bought the car, but the rest of the audio sounds quite good.

After getting a good deal on an IPod, I decided I would try to create a custom hook up from the tape player components of the audio system.

The problem is, I can't find any relevant explanations of the codes printed on the board.

There are two groups of connections to the main audio board from what was the cassette player. One group comes from the magnetic head and has fairly intelligible codes (RL, RR, FL, FR, GND, & COM). It seems that the first 4 name the audio channels and that GND is a ground. From how the head is wired to these (one side to com and the other to each of the channels), I'm guessing cassette tape is split into bands for each channel and that some change is registered for each band on each channel pin...

The second group of connections are more difficult to understand. These are what's given: "SW, 8V, GND, L1, R1, M0, M1, M2". I can guess about 8V and GND. Also, from the wiring of SW, I'm guessing that's the switch that informs the system that there's a tape in the deck (which it's necessary to short in order to do what I want to do???).

If anyone has any idea how I should feed two stereo channels the pins I've mentioned, I'm sure a heap of virtual praise is in store.

So far, I've learned I know a lot less about tape players than I thought (though I'm not surprised at that).

 

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

SW, 8V, GND, L1, R1, M0, M1, M2

if you know electronics well enough to be doing this project, it seems faifly obvious that they are standing for switch, 8V+, ground, coil 1, motor 0,1,2. as for shorting the switch, it depends on weather the sw is normally open or closed when you want cassette on. whatever it is, it what you'll have to do (if you don't know how to check, i suggest a different project...)

As for audio in, the codes you wrote wont be what you need. The best way I can help you, is that you upload a (fairly detailed) photo of the (solder side) board/s.

-mike

 

[Torben]

Hi SSKW,

When I ran into this, I found that my local library had books on (and even titled) "Repairing consumer audio electronics without a schematic". Something like that might give you just the information you need.

If I was pressed for time, in order to get a car tape player to accept a mini phone input, I would try grabbing a CD-to-tape adaptor (looks like a cassette with a wire ending in a mini phone plug), swap the plug for a jack, and use that. Not really pretty, but it could work.

I guess that idea depends on how well the tape player section works. It might work enough to use one of these things.


Torben