[techtalk] mp3 car player & cd changer unilink cabling

[Shelly L. Hokanson]

i posted this to a similar question on grrltalk earlier today -

about the mp3 machine - a couple of options to check out: maximum pc
magazine did up an article on how to make a mp3 machine suitable for
mounting in a car. their choice of parts was thru the roof in terms of parts
($$$), but it's linux based and will give you lots of ideas as to other
parts that are less expensive! i believe they even designed the database
that it uses. here's a link to it on the web:
http://www.maximumpc.com/route66/

also, i've been able to personally test out a tiny little barebones machine
called a "book pc" at work. it's integrated-everything but comes with linux
drivers (as well as all the other major OS's) - includes sound, video, 56k,
fast ethernet, tv-out, cd or dvd, and floppy. you add your hdd, cpu, and
memory. the one we tested used a ppga based socket 370 celeron chip - i'm
not sure what other options they offer. they're based on PC100 mainboards
and distributed by lots of companies (i've seen these mainboards in compaq
machines - they're not exactly high performance but they get the job done).
one place to get more info (though their web site is awful - broken english
and loads horribly slow) is www.pcchips.com. they list book pc's and "note
pc's" with chipsets other than the i810 but i can't get the pages to load to
give you more details! the other site that has more info (much cleaner and
easy to load but only lists the celeron based book pc) is
http://www.altonpc.com/product/bookpc/sysbb10cb2.shtml

they're quite small machines and probably more than suitable for an mp3
machine. i believe they cost around $175 without mem, cpu, and hdd.

i hope that helps!

shelly

techchron.com beta:
http://members.home.net/guppy3/techchron/index.html



----- Original Message -----
From: "TeknoDragon" <andross at ghettobox.dhs.org>
To: <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2000 5:39 PM
Subject: [techtalk] mp3 car player & cd changer unilink cabling


>
> Hi, my wife and I are planning on buying a car soon (see social list), and
> so I'm starting to look into building an mp3 player. The only desirable
> prebuilt system that I can see for this is the empeg player ($1100+
> www.empeg.com). so....
>
> I'd like to be able to build one myself so that I can save money (but
> maybe have to sacrifice trunk space) take mp3 cd's that we burn and store
> a lot on its hard drive. Since we allready have a few cpu's (an amd 586
> and a P166) and lots of ram lying around we'd really be looking for a
> tiny motherboard and an equally tiny case. There's a few good looking
> power supplies listed on mp3car.com and a lot of stories (most windoze tho
> ;-/).
>
> For hardware requirements I'm looking at:
> 16 bit audio
> have sb16 and an ensoniq pci, but onboard saves space
> two 3.5 bays and one to two 5.25 bays
> a multidisc changer would be nice, but most need SCSI
> linux drivers for disc changer?
> ethernet
> probably the simplest way to transfer to a home computer
> appletalk would be the best option for its automation
> are there any appletalk (AFS) clients for windoze?
> will need to operate with a pc occasionally
> swappable (not necessarily hotswap) power supply
> might have to hack one
> small footprint
> will probably be in the back of a hatchback, in the
> cdchanger space or in some other semi-out of the way place
> * interface with cdchanger unilink power, control, ground calbe
> is there some piece of hardware that will interface with
> this?
>
> For the software I'm deffinately considering a
> modified route66 suite (http://elmer.imaginemedia.com/route66/)
> to accompany whatever unilink solution can be found, and to facillitate
> intelligent managing of a cd-changer library (as pnp as i can make
> it) possibly including caching of entire songs on the hd for playlists
> that span several discs
>
> Getting all of this information to the front of the car might require a
> separate lcd, but I'd like to see how much I can get in the unilink
> control interface...
>
>
> this sort of thing would be a great kit to produce for mp3/linux
> enthusiests... I'm suprised noone's tried it yet. Any comments and
> suggestions are welcome!
>
>
> -karl
>
>
>
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