I’ve been using a rather generic looking Samsung USB DVD player for years now. Both for my Windows laptops as well as for my retro systems. The main ones being my MiSTer setup, my Windows 98 thin client and my RetroPie setup. I always have found it jarring that it doesn’t look very retro, with its sleek black design.

To remedy that, I bought a second hand usb DVD-drive. It has that mid to late nineties look to it with its bulkiness and beige color scheme. I quickly found out though that the internal power supply wasn’t working. That wasn’t too big a problem, because its mainly the enclosure that I want to use. So I bought an external power supply with a molex connector and hooked up my IDE-to-USB interface thingy and sure enough, the drive was useable. What I forget to mention here is that the last part of this procedure went smoothly, but the first part, namely opening up the enclosure didn’t. That was a bit of a pain. I’m always afraid to break things, a valid concern seeing as to how many things I’ve broken in the past.

Next up I cut out the hole were the fan was and put the cables through there. I hope the absence of a fan isn’t going to be problematic. But I guess the removal of the original power supply warrants the removal of the fan also. One drawback with this setup, is that the LEDs also had to go. But I guess my different setups already have enough blinking lights.

For now I’m happy to replace that much to futuristic DVD player with a more retro looking one. I now can push that eject button again without worrying about pushing the entire device off the table.

Future projects to make this even better are:

• Hook up the internal power switch. This requires some cables, but I don’t know which ones.
• Replace the DVD drive with a proper CD-ROM to make it even more period correct.
• Figure out if the audio out gets used.