I went to the “How Stuff Works” site and Googled this question, but came up with no answer. I’ve seen in-dash cd-changers that hold 3-6 discs. How do they shuffle the cd’s around? Is the unit deeper than a standard cd player?
It probably keeps them stacked the way a CD-ROM changer works. Those are no deeper than a standard half-height device
The models I’ve seen all have the CD changer mechanism in the trunk, the in-dash unit is just the control panel.
I’ve seen those. The models I’m talking about have you feed the discs directly into the “head” unit in the dashboard.
My husband’s car has a regular glove compartment and above it, a second glove compartment that houses the CD changer. He takes the thing you load the CDs into out, puts the CDs in (12 I think) and slides it back into the unit inside the compartment. Then he shuts it and uses the dash controls from there.
I wasn’t able to find out how this system works, but I was able to find a good description and picture of one.
The Nakamichi In-Dash model.
From the description of the thing, it seems like they figured out a way to have the reading laser move around inside the cabinet, to each of the different disks, as opposed to moving the disks around to meet the reading laser.
But it’s not like I know for sure. I just wanted to add a link showing people what you’re talking about.
I used to fix these awful things. The Alpine “3DE” line was especially popular when I was in the industry. They had a three disc cartridge that you loaded into your dash unit, and the mechanism popped the disc our just far enough so that the spindle could engage the center hole of the disc. The rest of the disc remained inside the cartrige as it spun, while the laser head read the part of the disc that stuck out of the magazine. A clever design that made the most use of a limited amount of space. Here is a picture of it.
Looking at the front view, it’s almost hard to imagine that this is a three-disc magazine. Unfortunately, they were a huge PITA to disassemble for service, and high on the list of reasons why I left consumer electronics service.
Thnaks for the info. I figured as much, but I thought to myself, “isn’t this pushing it a bit too far?”. Too many mechanicals in such a small space usually spells disaster.