Rewiring CD drive to a momentary button

[jruley]

I want to rewire my CD drive button to a vandal button and wanted to know if anyone here has done this. I tried to do this with my old drive and it was very difficult to actually get to the button so i'm looking for a SATA drive with easy access to the tray open/close button.

 

[keenan]

It's going to be a bit involved to get to on pretty much any drive I'd imagine, but by no means difficult. CD/DVD drives aren't that difficult to take apart, and they're not that difficult to put back together without damage either.

You could also take the software controlled route and hack a media keyboard or some other USB HID device to generate a key code and then remap that key to eject the drive.

 

[Mohonri]

In order to get to the contacts used by the CDROM, you'll have to take it apart. It's not a huge deal, but if you've never done it before, you'll want to practice on an old drive so you know what you're getting into. Just solder the two wires from the button to the two solder points on the cd drive's circuit board, and you should be good to go.