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Yeah, I was thinking that since the behavior of your CD changer was intermittent, it warranted some basic troubleshooting. And if it won't eject the cartridge, I would agree with your diagnoses that maybe it wasn't getting power.
Yes, a small multimeter would be the tool. Switch it to the DC setting (car electricity is DC). The CD Changer gets everything (power/ground/data/audio out) through the thick black cable that comes out from the trunk carpeting. It simply pushes on to the CD Changer and stays secured through the use of a sliding ring on it. You have to push or pull (don't remember) the ring then you can wiggle and pull off the cable.
Remove the cable and look in the plug and you'll see a bunch of pins. With the multimeter, you should test both the power and the ground pins (refer to Richard Brevan's schematic for the exact pins). Do this with the stereo playing after pressing the CD button on the radio (that may not be necessary but that's what I would do). With a DC circuit you need both ground and power, if one of them is bad, the component won't work. When it comes to the subtleties of using a multimeter, I can usually figure it out at the moment, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to give you instructions on exactly how to test the pins. Others on this board are much more qualified. Make sure the reading on the ground and power pins is constant and doesn't cut out if you wiggle the cable (which would indicate that it had a short in it somewhere). If power and ground is there, then I'd look at swapping out the changer unit next.
One other thing, and this may be a long shot because you've already done the fuse trick, but whenever my battery is disconnected my car (1996 900SE) forgets about the CD changer and I have to reset it. Sometimes it is more flaky than other times and I have to not only do the fuse trick, but also the "fuse trick + pull off the cable trick" too. Search and find the specific instructions on this board, but you basically perform the fuse trick and in the middle while you're waiting, pull off the cable and reattach it after replacing the fuse. Also, be sure that fuse is not blown.
One other option for you (and then I'll stop typing), is to not replace the cd changer and instead cut open the cable and use it to make an Aux In for an iPod or portable MP3 player. I edit an iPod web site (iPoditude.com), so I just had to say that!
Best of luck,
David
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