Modding a tray loading drive to a slot loading drive?

I am drafting out two very long and complex case mods to work on in the near future, and one of the sections of the biggest project requires slot loading optical drives.
Now, I already have two drives, a 16x DVD-R/W, and a combo DVD/CD-R/W that I am quite satisfied with. Outside of overpriced laptop form factor drives, I have yet to see any slot loading drives that even offer the features I currently have and regularly use.
So, I would much rather go pick up two slot loading CD drives from my local used computer store for about $10.00, rip out the internals, and replace them with the DVD-R/W and combo drive through technical ingenuity or black magic and alchemy if need be.
Anyone have any experience or words of wisdom on how to go about it, if it would even be possible?
Should I just spend the ~$300.00 to buy laptop components and just use those instead?

Hmmm, I've been messing about inside optical drives lately trying to fix a few, and I'd say you can probably waste every second of spare time you have in 3 months and still not get one working easily. If you had a large selection of different slot loads, and a large selection of drives to potentially mod into them, then you might match up a pair that can be frankensteined together with only a couple of weeks work, but odds are heavily against it being that easy. I had 20 different tray loaders pulled apart here, just trying to find a top clamp/bearing assembly to match either of a couple of others that were real noisy and found that there was very seldom a common mechanical part, motor or head assembly between designs.

Sorry to pee in your cheerios

Road Warrior

You didn't pee in my cheerios, just saved me from s***ing in them later.
Think I might still pick up one slot loader tonight to disassemble and examine as they are only $5.00, but I'm not going to be expecting anything.
Might make an interesting project, or it might just turn out to be another piece of disassembled hardware destined for the trash bin...

You'll just be making more junk for the closet to swallow.

A tray load drive uses the mechanical motion of the tray to raise and lower the motor spindle into the center of the disk.
A slot load drive has a motorized apparatus to do so once the disk is inserted.

Ner' the two shall meet, but it would be nice to mod case bezels around the cleaner looking slot load drives.
I think maybe it's a safety thing that got started when CD's got fast enough to shatter a bad disk...the door keeps plastic shrapnel out of your face (and Sony etc.. out of court)


Oooh lookey! 4 starz now....self high-five!

Well, looks like I might want to ditch my current drives when the time is right and just go with a convenient Plextor DVD-R/W and a Panasonic combo drive instead.
They are both going to be vertically mounted and as close to each other as possible, so it might actually work better to have a slim drive as well.
Too bad they're damn expensive, about $300.00 for the both of them. Well, time is money, and more time is more important as I can spend it doing more important things like reprogramming microcontrollers, etching PCBs, and soldering stuff together.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=444818

should help a bit.

actually was still on the first page of this forum, near the bottom