The sole and only reason why you, the reader, is engulfing yourself in reading
this material along with a nice warm container full with java, is so that you:
Wish to make a self-supportive box with only four cables sticking out of it: an RJ-45 network cable, a power cable, and two RCA cables (or just one 1/8 mini stereo plug).
Have all your mp3's on a big-server, while this MP3-box would fetch the files from the server.
Have no floppy driver, no video card, nor any harddrive in the MP3-box. Just a power supply, sound card, network card, memory, cpu, and a serial infrared receiver.
Be the envy of your friends :=)
Play your mp3's using your remote without having to turn on your workstation.
Size of the computer component (I was tempted to use PC104 boards, but
they were to expensive). Height of ISA/PCI cards (so that the box doesn't
look like a baby-AT case).
The appealing side of the box - does it look like a square rectangle,
pyramid, triangle, or something even more weird?
Paint. Do you want see-through box with flashing lights inside,
inconspicuous black box, or chrome looking?
Cost. The absolute minimum (taking into
consideration that you, the reader, has no spare computer parts) is about $70
(excluding tax, shipping, etc)
KISS (Keep It Simple and Stupid) - take everything that's unnecessary and
get rid of it (parallel port, modem card, video card, etc).
The idea behind this box is to separate tasks - the MP3-box can
only play the mp3's from a server, while you, the reader, can freely
add more files to your big-end server. Thus, the MPEG-box wouldn't
need a harddrive, nor floppy drive. It would boot the operating
system from the network (from the same server where the mp3 files are
located).
