Put all 12 discs in the cartridge and reinsert it with the ignition switch on, then listen if it cycles through all of them. That could take a minute or more. If it does, start by trying a cleaning disc to clean the laser assembly. It has to go all the way to the middle of each disc to read the table of contents, then it will put that in memory. If it can't read that, it won't know where to start reading the disc. The problem of reading the table of contents could have started days or weeks earlier but that information wasn't lost from memory until the battery was disconnected.
It is also possible the guide rails the laser sled slides on are gummed up so it can't move quite far enough to get to the table of contents. That's a similar problem to why some cd players won't play discs burned on a home computer. The clue there is you may have a few other discs that DO work.
If you don't hear the mechanism cycle through all the discs, look for a blown fuse in the changer's wiring harness. There were no factory-installed changers yet in '96, so anything you have would not have a fuse in the car's fuse box. There will usually be two of them near the changer in the wiring harness. Different models do different things when the memory fuse is blown. Some don't work at all. Some forget that a disc was in the player, and they try to load a second disc when you turn on the ignition switch.
Some run the changer on the memory circuit, but they read and play the discs on the switched power wire from the radio. On those, you can insert the cartridge and hear it cycle through the discs when the ignition switch is off. If won't act any differently when the ignition switch is turned on if that fuse is blown.
As for the fuses, if you do find one that is blown, don't panic. That happens very often when reconnecting the battery. It's caused by current surges from computer memory circuits and other things quickly charging up. For those, nothing else is needed besides replacing the fuse.
Saturday, December 29th, 2012 AT 12:21 PM