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Technics MP3 Player CaseMod

P

Pyrofer

n00b
Joined
Aug 20, 2004
Messages
4
Just thought id share the pics of a mod I did a while back so as to attract comments.
Id like to know what people think of it before I begin my next project.



This was originaly part of a Technics Mini system. I stripped the case totally and installed a Fanless mini-itx mb and 20gig 2.5" hd running Win2k.
Winamp is the playing engine, using a Keyboard and LCD plugin to controll the front panel buttons and display. ALL the front panel buttons are wired to emulate keys on the keyboard, for example pressing play hits "p" on the kb. The screen is an OLED from CrystalFontz and is hardwired to the Parallel port.
The Power light is just connected to the MB power led but the "timer" light is now the HD led.
Pressing the power button takes the unit in/out of standby for quick booting.
an Internal wireless adaptor allows me to connect to a shared drive and drop in extra tracks as well as use remote desktop to access windows.
The built in amp on the soundcard was too small, so a seperate high power amp is installed in the case behind the mb to directly power some decent hifi speakers. Only adding an IR remote is left to do now, but im too lazy at the moment!
Oh yeah, the line in is also present on the back so you can use it as an amp for TV or games consoles etc.

What do you guys think?
 
more pics! i wanna see the inside, how long did it take you to do this? also what kinda lcd did you use? was it the one that was stock?
 
wow i didn't even realise it was a comp till i read the rest of the post.. more pics of the inside and back and such
 
This thing is so awesome I can't believe it. You HAVE to give us more pictures. Pictures of everything/every angle/insides. PLEASE!
 
Ok, The screen is an OLED LCD replacement from CrystalFontz. I cant recommend it highly enough. It looks amazing, I wish more of these were available. It acts exactly like the cheap Alphanumeric LCDs with parallel input, but looks so much better...

Ok, More pics.. Remember, your not meant to see INSIDE this mod, so its not pretty.
First, here it is as I was starting to strip it

The small Green PCB to the right is a hardware MP3 player i tried, without much luck. The rest is the original Technics electronics. I had hoped to re-use the amp chip etc, but for the Mini-ITX mod i had to rip it all out...

And finally, down to the metal..

Now I had to start laying out the PC components, I made a card base to put them on so I could mark the mounting positions. After that I drilled holes for support pillars to fix the MB and PSU onto.

This next one is a poor messy photo. I wanted to get things up and running to test it, so excuse the mess and poor photo. The small single chip PCB hanging out on the right is teh Keyboard encoder. This takes the front panel buttons and turns them into a PS2 keyboard :) Its now fitted inside the front panel behind the buttons with just a ps2 lead coming into the inside for the PC.

Here is a better pic of the Original LCD before I bought the OLED screen, Its hardwired to the parallel port and controlled by winamp. You can see the ps2 cable coming from the chassis to the right, the usb leads were just for setup and are not used in the final mod. I will wire up extentions to them to give usb ports on the back of the case eventualy, but no need at the moment as its controlled either by from panel buttons or remotely over network.
 
more info on the hardware mp3 player? give it to me :p gimme gimme :D
 
The hardware player was a kit from www.mp3ar.com.
I never had much luck with it, but probably because of my construction sk!llz when it comes to sufrace mount components, the tricky little buggers.
It used to play, but would lock up (very rarely) on some songs and I couldnt work out why. Also it didnt play WMA.
It did have a nice graphical screen, easy GUI and remote control however.
I still have it if somebody wants to buy it off me :p (look at the price on the site before making offers, and remember I spend a further £40 or so in components for it after getting the kit!)
I much prefer the PC based option because I can do streaming from shoutcast and play all kinds of files now, much more freedom than before. Also, if needed it can work as a download machine when I want to get SP2 or something and dont want to leave my main PC on all the time.
Due to capacity problems its running an old 3.5" hd (20gig) atm because the 2.5" went into my laptop :p
This seems to be a little noisy compared to the smaller drives and when music is quiet I can hear the drive spinning (erg) so im going to buy a nice 30gig 2.5" drive for it asap.

Any more questions? Im surprised nobody asked about how I made the buttons work as a PC keyboard, ill assume you are all technical enough to do that yourselves then!
 
ouch $104? i can get a muvo that somone ripped out the microdrive for like $20 on ebay :eek:
 
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