Yes yes, I know I have this thing with Doom but ah well. Here it goes, a while back I blew one of the channels on my Cambridge Audio A1 amplifier, and as of late I have had an old motherboard lying around... sooooooo I have decided to make it into an mp3 jukebox. Duron 800 with 256 mb ram, which will be PLENTY to play mp3s in all fairness. The rig will have my 80gb mp3 drive in it, and a smaller 2gb drive for the o/s (which will make more space on my main rig for another 210gb drive). Am still pondering over the idea of having a small 7" tft permanently attached to it. Started gutting it out tonight; It should fit in very nicely ontop of this lot However the power suply in the amp is being a right pain to remove, going to have to hack the screw off with my trusty dremel, however its 1:55am so I will have to wait a few hours heh heh Hopefully I will fit one of Melbin's ir gizmos in it so I can control it with a good old remote control. Also considering getting a small lcd on the front panel so that I can see the current playing song. This is likely to just be a case mod, with some VERY basic electronics for lights and such forth, and am going to have to code myself some software so that I can remotely control the rig. Any ideas or suggestions are very welcome.
No ideas or suggestions from me, just wanted to say good luck and that if you pull this off it'll look sweet
Ok doing some more work on it today, now that I can dremel away heh heh Two HDs Sorting out the software on it atm. I need to find a low profile graphics card, or once the system is booted up and running just remove the gfx card from it, hopefully that wont make it crash, and I will still be able to ssh or vnc into it. Trying to get an O/S installed on it atm, once thats done I think I will leave it for this weekend. Need to make a custom power supply for it, and a cusrom front panel.
how's this for low profile: http://usa.asus.com/products/vga/v9520m/overview.htm nice little project man
its a bit of a coincidence that your amp blew. my mums did as well (Cambridge audio A1 amp) It wasn't even playing at the time. This project looks like it could be good.
After a hard... well easy days work things have begun to take shape quite nicely. In about an hour I should be able to add it to the rest of my audio gear, the system is currently updating itself with the latest hot fixes and the like. Still to be done; - Custom power supply - Secure motherboard and drives (atm things are loose) - Implement iR remote control system - Design and build of the front panel - Respray the rest of the case (am tempted to make an acrylic lid for it.... The software for remote controlling it over irc and vnc is now sorted, and running smooth. Not going to work on it till next weekend I dont think, unless I get bored at work, which is VERY unlikely.
Some MSI job, cba to look it up atm, might do later on Its not that big an amp, a Cambridge A1. All 3 of the other amps I am running here are bigger than that one... infact thats the smallest amp I have ever owned... rAr
And there it is all nicely setup with the other amps. Next weekend hopefully I can sort out some of those things on my todo list
nice id say keep it lookign liek a bog standard cambridge audio amp (there nto bad amps for the money) & jsut squrrel away a vfd someware in your room where you can see it what operatign system are you usign on it?
This looks like its gonne turn out pretty sweet. You just need to fill up the hole in the front with something aethetic/useful. I really like how you have it set up as Im thinking my computer in one of those would look awesome on top of my amps for my computer's sound system.
i think it would be good if the old volume dial was actually made to work as a volume dial & the power switch switched the pc off i stil say it would look good beign kept to look exactly like a normal amplifier (but thats jsut me i like hidden equiptment)
Hopefully next weekend I can get some black plastic or some perspex and do a nice looking front face for it. Not going to have an LCD on there yet. My main priority atm is to mount everything securely in the box, then sort out the PSU, then have a go at making a decent plain looking front for it. Just needs a space for the ir diode, the power led and the hd activity led for now. LCD to follow next month when I have some more money.
You can possibly reuse the volume control by certain means if you have a creative soundcard. http://www.bit-tech.net/article/54/
Managed to do some updates. Not the stuff I wanted to, but at least some work is continually being done on it The thing was getting far too hot, so I added a nice tasty fan to the front. However it was too damn loud at night, the woman started to compain so I unhooked it. Next day wired a nice lil switch to it. Oh and have come up with a better solution for seeing whats going on, have hooked my 15" tft to it now, so no more needing an LCD heh heh. Thats about it, nothing major Will get the IR receiver (thanks to Meblin) built for next weekend. Ah0y \o/ Tasty fan of doom Yes I did solder the connections together before taping them, i'm not THAT lazy Go go super tft (of doom naturally)
Lookin good hk - love what you have done so far and have found it interesting to read through, since I have been tempted to do something similar in the past. I think I would prolly end up using a Via Epia mobo to keep costs, heat and noise down (I would have to buy the components anyway as I don't have anything spare that runs quietly). If I do eventually get around to it one day, expect to be pestered about how to get the remote controlling over IRC working . Anyways, I look forward to the IR stuff and the new front pannel.
