Alas, under Windows, ioctl() nor DeviceIoControl() are the calls your looking for (although DeviceIoControl() would be useful for loading and unloading the tray). The area to look at is mciSendCommand(), using MCI_STATUS_PARMS, and some of it's cousins. Here's a link to an article on Microsofts MSDN site about retrieving such information.

I did some searching last night on the web and under MSDN about doing this, and have come to the conclusion that a Win32::CDROM module needs to be written. Since I'd like to take a shot at writing an XSUB module, this may be the perfect playground for it. If this doesn't turn into a GUP (Great Unfinished Project), I'll post the results here on PM.

--Chris

e-mail jcwren