mp3 comp innards in a vcr shell (official question)

[7]

I gutted an old vcr case so I can make an mp3 box for my living room. It's an old computer for the brains and it's interface will actually be the vcr buttons. Power, forward, reverse, stop and a couple others. I have a LCD to display the song title.

My question is this... Can I start win98 without a video card installed or will it stop? I know I can get to the autoexec.bat which probably means my motherboard allows it through but i'm not to sure about win98.

[m4a2t0t]

i dont think u can start it up without a vid card

[mikemean]

What if you have a mobo with onboard video?

[MagicMikey]

Ya, like mikemean said, if it has on-board video then it'll work, if not you can buy an 8MB PCI video card for 5$. I'm curious as to what your approach or plan is to make the buttons from your VCR work as the interface... sounds interesting... ;)

[7]

I have an old video card but the problem is trying to get it as flat as possible so it will fit inside the vcr case.

As far as the controls go, when I gutted the thing, I noticed the circuit board behind the buttons can easily be soldered and two wires can be connected to make the contact when the button is pressed. I already have the power and power led hooked up this way.

[MagicMikey]

Ya but these are specific commands no? You have to make them work with Windows or Linux....the power is no problem ;) but the other are....hehehe ;)

There are cards that a very low profile...usually the budget cards, but it would help all that much unless you mod the piece of metal on the back end. Same thing with your sound card...

[7]

Update on my project.

I used an old low profile video card. A top of the line trident 512K video card from the early 90's.

I finally got the interface all soldered up. It was time consuming but it works. It involved taking apart an old keyboard, finding out which combination of keys modeled a key stroke (z = prev, b=forward ...) and soldering wires from the keyboard pins to the vcr buttons.

It all worked, well I was putting it back together and I turned it on and BOOM! A capacitor blew on the power supply causing a big cloud of smoke. It was actually kind of cool but I hope all I blew was the power supply and not the motherboard, harddrive or lcd. I guess I'm on hold until I get a new power supply :(

[el bob]

Originally posted by 7
Update on my project.

I used an old low profile video card. A top of the line trident 512K video card from the early 90's.

I finally got the interface all soldered up. It was time consuming but it works. It involved taking apart an old keyboard, finding out which combination of keys modeled a key stroke (z = prev, b=forward ...) and soldering wires from the keyboard pins to the vcr buttons.

It all worked, well I was putting it back together and I turned it on and BOOM! A capacitor blew on the power supply causing a big cloud of smoke. It was actually kind of cool but I hope all I blew was the power supply and not the motherboard, harddrive or lcd. I guess I'm on hold until I get a new power supply :(

I hope its alright

I just lost a bunch of hardware after I shorted a power supply but I was lucky and most of the stuff still works

[7]

I got a micro ATX power supply for the reason that it was cheap and low profile so I don't have to mod (blow up) another PSU. Threw it in and it powered up no problem.
It's alive, it's alive!

So now I have a clean looking mp3 player in a VCR shell. 4x20 lcd that displays artist, title, playlist number/playlist total number, song time/total song time and a spectrum analyzer. It's controlled via the normal vcr buttons (play, stop, pause, forward, reverse) and other buttons (+10 songs, -10 songs, shuffle, repeat, shutdown).

Next phase will be to add remote control capability and an onscreen menu to choose a playlist.

[Vesuvius]

Sounds like a really cool project, of course now we all want to SEE your creation...Pics? Specs? Congrats on getting it rolling though :)

[downhill]

Interesting project. Maximum PC had a similar project a while back. In fact, there were new updates to it till they went to upgrade their website and never came back online. At least if they did, I havn't found it yet.

[Brent]

Pictures! Pictures!

That's one for the [H] man, you could be on the front page if you took pics and sent them to Steve or Kyle

[7]

Thanks. The pictures will have to wait because I have no digital camara, no scanner and my webcam sucks. I tried taking it's picture but the focus sucks and you can't make out the lcd text or any buttons:( . I do plan on it though.

I did however find a plugin that allows an onscreen menu to choose playlists and I named it... Frank Duex (mainly because it's my second frankenstein unit, i like bloodsport, and i'm a dork):)

[IranianHobo]

Originally posted by el bob


I hope its alright

I just lost a bunch of hardware after I shorted a power supply but I was lucky and most of the stuff still works

Hey bob hows about tell them the WHOLE story? ;) You knw the screwdriver and the fan.

On another note that MP# machine seems really cool. Just one question. Does the fan make a lot of noise? I remember seeing a site about making a home threatre based around a computer but on problem was fan noise.

[7]

Actually, the fan noise isn't that big of a problem.
I have the psu fan, the cpu fan and a random small fan I had lying around that's hooked up to the hdd which I will probably take off.

This weekend I plan on making it so the pause || button lights up when it's on pause and working on the cable management.

[el bob]

Pics would be nice

[Qwijib0]

Originally posted by 7
Thanks. The pictures will have to wait because I have no digital camara, no scanner and my webcam sucks. I tried taking it's picture but the focus sucks and you can't make out the lcd text or any buttons:( . I do plan on it though.

I did however find a plugin that allows an onscreen menu to choose playlists and I named it... Frank Duex (mainly because it's my second frankenstein unit, i like bloodsport, and i'm a dork):)

I don't care... how about an out-of-focus teaser..

[Qwijib0]

Originally posted by Qwijib0


I don't care... how about an out-of-focus teaser..

bump...

pics!

[Qwijib0]

Originally posted by Qwijib0


bump...

pics!

This is the daily bump for Tuesday, January 29th.

[Qwijib0]

Originally posted by Qwijib0


I don't care... how about an out-of-focus teaser..

This is the daily bump for Wednesday, January 30th.

[7]

pics are up at:

http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?s=&postid=573166#post573166

[athalonxpkid]

can u email me the plans for the whole setup, or at least a brief description of how you got the lcd display to work. thanx