The hardware is actually an intel-based PC. It uses a P100 with 16MB ram. Don't
ask me if a 486 would do the job or if the HD is too large, I just had these
parts so I used them ;-) I believe that a 486 would do the job, and the HD
isn't needed, a floppy would be just fine.
Output
Instead of a monitor it has
a 4line/20chars LCD (LCD2041) Display from
Matrix Orbital. I bought it from
linuxcentral. It arrived here in
greece in 10 days, no problem with customs. It's expensive,
but it has an excelent viewing angle and you don't have to program a PIC.
You can find several C routines for handling this LCD in the software section.
I mounted the LCD on the 3.5inch bay using a drill and imagination. It took
2 bays.
Input
For the keyboard, instead of using some parallel/serial keypad
I chose to dismantle an old keyboard I had and use its key decoder chip, so
as you can see in the photos, I just connected some switches in the places
where the keyboard keys would normally be and mounted them to the front.
I didn't solder the cables directly to the motherboard so that I can easily
disconnect the front keys and connect a normal keyboard (for upgrading linux).
More info can be found
here.
I've also installed a floppy to automatically update the software from the
rxcontrol with a touch of a button (from version 1.1).
Infra red support is here thanks to Bryan Mattern.
Media
Linux boots from a HD though it could boot from a flash disk. The mp3 files
are on cdrom which plays for 10 hours constantly @128Kbps. When DVD is out
it will have 18.5 days of music/disk.
Case
The case comes from an old PC but I painted it with black-satin spray. The
height is 13cm,which is the shortest case I could find. It fits perfectly
among my other stereo equipement. The front panel with the keys and the
display needs a heavy redesign though.
Noise
I extinguished the noise from the Power Supply fan with a simple variable
resistor in series with the fan. I can adjust the fan speed that way to something
not audible. The only thing that can be heard right now
is the cpu fan which is not a problem. The whole thing does not overheat even
here in Greece :-)
Summary
pc case, power supply (plus fan trim resistor)
motherboard with onboard IDE and serial/parallel ports
Pentium 100 MHz, 16 MB RAM, CPU fan
graphics card (not required,but why not?)
sound card PCI 128
CD-ROM drive 4x, completely silent
hard disk unit 300MB SCSI from an old Apple (!)
Future Domain SCSI controller (1992)
floppy disk drive for software updates
Special parts:
serial LCD panel from MatrixOrbital working at 19200bps
customized keyboard