nutwood

I recently acquired a 1996 Grand. All well except the CD stacker doesn't work. It's an Alpine CHM 5601 (possibly S601) and it doesn't recognise when there's CD's in it.
I've a few options.
1:Pull it apart and tinker. Might get lucky.
2: Find another unit from a dead Jeep. Again, might get lucky.
3: Forget about the CD player and hook in a MP3 player. Keep the CD's nice and safe at home.
Option 3 appeals to me the most but the Alpine unit talks to the head unit in the dash via an Alpine Bus communication arrangement. I'm a bit doubtful that I'm going to be able to simply hack into the audio cables and make it work.
I'm wondering if anyone's gone down this path before? I'm not even sure if the head unit is the same in all Grands, or if they're different in Australia. There's no brand on the head unit but it's obviously able to talk "Alpine".