Silicon Chip magazine in Australia just published a project that interfaces a uC to an IDE CDROM to play audio disks. It includes an LCD display to indicate what it's doing (track, time index etc.)
I sacrificed a CD ROM Drive to discover that it has no amplifier inside, so all you have to do is:
1. Find a few CD ROM Drives (not all of them will work)
2. Have them standalone (by themself)
3. Connect up amplifier (an absolute necesity) with speakers. Must have own power supply
4. Connect up 12v and 5V connections
5. Press play, hopefully it should work!
I sacrificed a CD ROM Drive to discover that it has no amplifier inside, so all you have to do is:
1. Find a few CD ROM Drives (not all of them will work)
2. Have them standalone (by themself)
3. Connect up amplifier (an absolute necesity) with speakers. Must have own power supply
4. Connect up 12v and 5V connections
5. Press play, hopefully it should work!
Problem is CD players are a dime a dozen, some cost less than a PIC.
Now a networked MP3 player like the Squeezebox was originally based on a PIC16F877 would be nice project. Too bad that 40x2 VFD display is $90 https://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/slimp3.html **broken link removed**