If one thing is clear in the future, it is that digital media is king. In the gaming world, it is becoming much more common to buy games digitally than to buy physical copies; it has been that way for PC games for years now, with the success of Steam, faster SSDs (open in new tab), and new consoles being released without disk drives. Some companies have seen an increase in sales of optical drives (open in new tab), but generally speaking the days of the DVD drive are completely over.

DVD drives in particular are no longer of much use to anyone. Streaming services often offer the same movie in a digital format with higher quality. Plus, if you're a big physical media fan, you've probably upgraded to Bluray or destroyed your VHS collection altogether. So it's time to get rid of the DVD player and opt for something actually useful, like a laser microscope.

Kuriz recently posted a clever build on hackaday (opens in new tab) that turns two DVD drives into a microscope. The project is described as simple, but requires a bit of soldering, which may be confusing to those unfamiliar with this type of work.

I used equipment from Analogue Discovery for this fabrication, so please follow this guide (opens in new tab). This equipment is not cheap, but it does a lot of heavy lifting. However, these devices are not inexpensive. Still, if you have the parts lying around, you can try them out inexpensively and get some really cool results.

You will need two drives to be able to take out the DVD pickup. In this example, Kuriuzu uses HOP-150X pickups, which can also be purchased online. He also recommends using an Analogue Discovery 2, but the original is fine. Other than this, all that is needed is a few resistors and cables. A detailed parts list is available on the project website (opens in new tab).

Once assembled, you should have a nifty laser scanning microscope. This involves scanning a laser horizontally and vertically across the object and using the reflected light to create an image. Typically, it can scan very detailed images with high contrast, and is often used to obtain details not available with other scanners. Of course, how well you follow the steps can make or break it; PC Gamer is not responsible for any failed DIY projects.

The working image of the scanner posted by Kuriuzu is pretty cool, especially considering its humble beginnings. Even if they weren't super useful as imaging data, they would still fascinate the viewer and make for some wild custom artwork.

Whatever these end up being, they will be far more useful than a DVD drive in 2022.