Sheez...
If all you want to do is play MP3's on your stereo, consider the much
cheaper solution of a
6 gig portable player...
Check out www.archos.com
320.00 retail.
You dump your MP3's to it via the USB port (it appears as an external hard
disk drive)...
I'm playing with getting Linux to work with it now. We'll see...
-JMS
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Vincent Danen
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 8:19 PM
To: Linux Mandrake Expert Mailing List
Subject: [expert] Making an MP3 box... suggestions needed
Well, I finally got my hands on a low-end machine (hmmm... that seems
backwards). This one is a cast off of my brothers and is a Compaq
Deskpro P60 or something with 48MB RAM. Has a 2GB HDD. I'm putting
in a 10/100 realtek PCI nic and want to put in a soundblaster. I plan
on mounting my machine's MP3 drive via NFS on this little box and
hooking it up to my home stereo. Since the home stereo is a Harman
Kardon amp with Nuance speakers, I obviously want the best soundcard I
can get to take advantage of the system it'll be connecting to.
I was thinking of the sb live platinum 5.1. It has that front panel
with the infrared remote control and such. It's a little pricy for us
Canadians, so I want to make sure it'll do what I hope it will. Has
anyone run one of these beasties under Linux? Specifically, I'm
hoping there is some way to make the remote control xmms if possible.
I want this box to be headless or, if necessary, have it connected to
my TV (I have no idea if this is possible... I know you can get video
cards to bring the TV *in*, but is there a video card to put the video
out to a TV, and if so, what kind?). Considering how much of this
stuff is onboard (it is a Compaq), I'm not sure if another videocard
will work on it (anyone know?). If nothing else, is there some kind
of convertor to take a standard VGA out to a TV in? Maybe that might
be the easiest way (although I have no idea if this kind of thing
exists). All I want is a way to see what xmms is doing so i can
change songs or something (if the remote doesn't work).
Maybe there's a better way to do this with a console app, like
mpg123... I mean, I can ssh into the box from another machine and get
it to start playing, but that's kind of a pain in the butt and I'd
rather avoid it if necessary.
As you can see, I haven't the first clue about this sort of thing. I
absolutely horrible with electronics, and I've followed some mp3-box
"how-to's" out there about buying an LCD display you connect to your
serial port to display what songs are playing and some really funky
ways to control the player with a remote. I'm looking for a
relatively cheap way to do it (the platinum would be the most
expensive component considering I got this machine free, I don't want
to spend much more than the cost of the soundblaster card).
Anyone done this or am I asking the impossible? Heck, it might be
impossible to get Linux installed on this thing... I haven't even
tried that yet (talk about getting way ahead of myself). Anyways,
it's a weekend project and I was wondering if someone had an
experience with something like this so I'm not beating a dead horse if
someone else has a magic recipe or knows of some programs that will do
what I want.
Thanks muchly in advance.
--
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