NSM CDR 100 XA

Depending on how it's laid out, it should be fairly straightforward. Is this a unit where there is a disc robot that puts it into the tray of the drive?

Have you disassembled the unit enough to see if it uses a "standard" CD-ROM drive mechanism? (The unit seems to be essentially un-Google-able in any of its physical specs.) Most of the older CD jukeboxes I've seen use caddies for the CDs. If yours does, then you're going to have a tough time finding a DVD drive which would be at all straightforward modify to work with the robot. Others use proprietary carriers which slot into what's essentially a normal tray-loading drive with the tray ripped out. (The carrier gets swallowed by the drive and takes the place of the missing tray.) You could *probably* modify a generic tray-loading DVD drive to work by removing the tray and suitably modifying the insertion mechanism to accept the jukeboxes' carriers, but I suspect it'd be a challenge to make it work reliably.

--Peace

its a yamaha scsi drive in there, i hauled mine apart to extract a dropped metal screw from the innards, so i had opportunity to snoop around.

since the drive itself remains static (except for the head and spindle) any drive that fits may be usable dvd/blu-ray/cdr/cdrw etc

specific mechanical positioning is critical though.

only problem may be all the signals the rest of the box neeeds to know whats going on with the drive as it shuffles the discs around.

most nsm stuff i have played with is so proprietary it is just not worth the effort to try to hack at.

I have one that I already bought "hacked" I'm just now going to open it up and see how things have been done but of the two I bought one is a real NSM with a dvd-ram burner hacked into it, the other is also an NSM but it's been re-labeled by Kodak as their own, that one is a simple cd burner.(Just traded them yesterday, going to be bringing them home tomorrow.)

Cool.
When you open it up could you please make a report on how you did it. I would be most thankfull. (especially if you include pictures)

Thanks for you're response anyway.

I've been trying to locate software that will work the robotics but it seems rather elusive. Any ideas where I could get ahold of a copy of the control software?

I know it's not the same, but when I had an old 4 disc NEC changer it operated on the LUNs to change discs. It didn't need special drivers for that.

edhunter i know the software is elusive, in fact i have been looking for it for ages and found none.
There are 2 programs (wich i read of) that can do this, the first one is Macjuke; i don't know wich version but i've read the program should be able to do it but without that many options.
second there is a program from astarte called miles appart (or however you should spell it) this program has a very cool feature; it can share you're entire collection from the jukebox over a network, it will index all discs and make them apear on the network and whenever someone wants a file the program loads the correct disc and looks up the file and sends it over the network.
However, as cool as this all sounds it seems that no one has the program anymore, not a legal copy or a piracy version. I know this site does not encourage piracy and they are right to do so but still the Astarte company doesnt exist anymore and now a beatiful program is wasted to the eternal resting fields.

So once again if anyone knows where to get a "legal" copy of Astarte Miles appart then please let me know.

Allright, I pulled out the drive in my DVD juke, but this seems fairly factory to me. It has a Toshiba SD-W 1101 DVD RAM drive. Upon closer inspection it seems fairly easy to put in any drive you wish, though you do need to do some metalwork.
PHASE I:
Basically you can pull out the entire deck containing the spindle and the burner/reader head from any scsi drive along with the electronics. Seeing that every drive has a different shaped "deck" containing these two, what you need to do is see the -exact- measurements of your original drive's spindle from each edge of the baseplate, and have an exact replica of the baseplate done with the middle cut out to fit the new 'deck'. From there on everything should be fairly straight forward, just install the boards of the drive on the bototm of the baseplate and make sure all the mechanics will move freely.
PHASE II:
Before installing however check the left side of your original drive(as installed in the juke) for a small PCB that you need to remove, and install to your newly made drive. This is where I'd need some help really, I'd need someone who has a TOSHIBA SD-W 1101 DVD-RAM drive to see where exactly the rest of the wiring connects to. I know the blue wire goes to the drive's eject switch, the yellow orange and red seem to be connected to what would be the wiring of the motor that lifts/lowers the 'deck' in the normal drive (Need to confirm this), and only one wire remains in question, the purple... I'm not entirely sure where that is going it just attaches to a seemingly random via on the main pcb. Any help with this would be appreciated.

If you just want to install one of the TOSHIBA SD-W 1101 drives then I can give you exact points where to solder here. But I myself am aiming to at least add a newer scsi dvd reader as this old drive has trouble seeing new dvd-rs written with 8x speed.

Heyas... I'm also interested in modding some cdr 100s to dvd or better. I've been collecting a few off ebay but have yet to perform the modification.

I did, however, track down the robotic serial control protocol documentation and have implemented a simple command line controller and java control API. With the software it's possible to perform all supported operations of the 100... load, unload, status, etc. It can be found here. I'm developing under linux, so it works easiest with that, but it should also be possible to run it under windows. Please email me with any problems or suggestions and I will update the program/install page accordingly. It should work for the mercury 150s also.

AFA hacking the 100 goes, my only concern is the need for leads to the replaced drive... if the robotics will continue to function without the standard Toshiba connector... and if not, is there any way to work around it. I'm planning on replacing the drive with a dl capable dvd hooked up to a ide-usb connector then to the computer over usb. Such a setup would allow for much drive flexibility. If it is possible to replace the cd with blue ray (at 50G/disk) or hddvd, the juke will have a much more reasonable capacity of 5TB. Of course, the price of the media will have to drop quite a bit to give it the edge of HD pricing. Also, with the control software and related code, it's possible to use the juke for batch dvd operations... automated backup up a directory tree to multiple dvds, indexing dvds to a database, ripping audio cds, duplicating dvds, etc. I'm very interested in hacking success stories.

interesting to see these efforts, now i am encouraged to start my hack.
i have found a torrent for all the NSM boxes, software/manuals etc
search torrents name for it, found mine in PirateBay site

Have you actaully been able to get your jukebox to respond via serial on a unix/linux box?

I have a NSM CDR-100.. I have it working on windows with no problem under the nsm commmander application, but haven't been able to get very far with the software from benow.

Any pointers you can share on how you got it working? (if you did?)

Thanks.

using the nsm Commander software it is completely useable and controllable. rs232 protocol is straightforward, so should be no problem with any OS. am working on a Visual Basic GUI interface to make this thing go. have uploaded nsm software package as a torrent NSM_Jukebox. includes code library, RS232 control/response codes/ protocol structures, examples, documentations for other NSM boxes also. it aint so tough as i thought! NSM just managed to mystify it by keeping the documentaion secret! also http://benow.ca/docs/changers/nsm/