Mp3 Server Writeup
Well, I have to say I'm impressed with my unemployed self! My Mp3 Server has come along better than I expected. I got an email asking me to explain how I did it, so here's a little bit about how it works:
First of all, let me point out that the system I'm using as the server is OLD. it's based on an AMD K6 CPU (about 500Mhz) motherboard that I've shoehorned a little over half a gig of RAM onto.
In fact, this system is so old that it still even has ISA slots on it (you can also see my WiFi NIC in the photo)! So, having my ancient system (that just barely runs Win 2K and Winamp), I proceeded to slap in two hard-drives (One 2Gig for the OS and a 40Gig for Mp3s) that provide me with the room for 38 days of music. Currently, only 5.5 Gig is used up (or, five and one quarter days of continual playing). So, after scraping together all of my parts, I took the case outside and painted it black. Now, it might pass for an audio component in a dark alleyway.
Then, I took the Infrared Receiver I had soldered together (thank God for Mr. Iverson's electronics class in Highschool!) and attached it in one of the empty drive bays. Then I simply drilled a hole in a bay cover and glued some exposed color negative film over the hole to block non-IR light (it has to be really exposed - black).So, now it's time to hook everything up. So I grabbed a Y-adapter (1x3.5mm to 2xRCA) and plug it into my A/V Receiver. Then, I installed a little Winamp plugin called SnowCrash (I had to do a little XML hacking to make it work properly). Once I did that, I got this:
So, if you look closely, you'll see that not only can I view the player from any computer, I can also control all of the functions (play, pause, etc...). I also get detailed song information that updates every 1 or 2 seconds. I can load playlists, control the volume, etc... Pretty much complete functionality.
Pretty neat, huh?
Hopefully this hasn't bored my regular readers too much. ;)
