Couple of things to watch out for:
- Drives from a desktop PC require both 5V and 12V in order to function. That means the are not plug and play with a Pi as the Pi cannot provide the 12V.
- Laptop drives are usually 5V but have a different connector that is not compatible with the average USB/SATA adapter.
- My experience is that not all USB/SATA adapters work with optical drives. I don't know of a way to check that other than buying one and testing it.
- If you're buying USB adapeter(s) make sure you get the correct type. It's not impossible that an optical drive from 2006 is IDE rather than SATA.
- By the time you've sorted out and purchased all the above you might find it would have been cheaper to buy a portable USB CD/DVD drive instead. Or, if the PC still boots, to bung a basic Linux distro on it (e.g. https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ra ... i-desktop/)and use that rather than a Pi.
Statistics: Posted by thagrol — Thu Nov 07, 2024 12:55 am
