The motherboard I wanted to use was a very simple motherboard. I wanted something small and cheap. For this reason, I opted for a baby-AT sized board with everything on it. This board has sound, video, and 10/100bT networking on it.
Why did I want a board like the one I got? Simple: size and power. Because I don't need to use any PCI cards, I can make the case as thin as the processor & heatsink allow. Since there are no PCI cards consuming power, the board also requires less power. The onboard sound, video, and network use far less power than their PCI counterparts would. Less power = less heat = smaller, cheaper power supply.
In retrospect, I really should have just bought one of thos biscuit PCs that are the size of a floppy drive and include everything my board does. Originally, I was put off by the high price. Of course, now that I'm built the player, I see that one wouldn't have cost too much more than what I got.
The processor I chose rather arbitrarily. The K6 was cheap. End of story.
For RAM, I ordered 32MB of PC100. That was dirt cheap at the time, only about $25. The place I ordered from accidently sent me a 64MB DIMM. I didn't complain. After all, while putting together the player, I could use this RAM in my G3. :-)
The hard drive I got was a 10.2GB Maxtor DiamondMax. I have a lot of CDs, so I was going to need a big hard drive. The drive will hold around 200-250 CDs. I own 125, so it should hold me for a while. This is rated to handle a 50G shock while operating and remain error free. If you do the math, you'll see that it has more chance of surviving an accident than I do. For $50 I could have doubled the capacity, but that is $50 I didn't want to spend. No regrets yet.
A nice case sure is a nice thing. Too bad I didn't get one. Instead, I bought a little plastic tool case from Walmart and cut out the dividers inside it. This left me with a great case: it fit the motherboard and hard drive perfectly, and was only about 2.5" deep. What this means is that I can very nearly hide this between my trunk liner and the spare tire. As an added bonus, the $2 price tag just can't be beat.
If I decide to get a little adventurous, there is a website (www.mpja.com) which has some cool aluminum project boxes which would probably do the job as well. They cost at least 17x as much as my current case.
My LCD display is from Hantronix. It is a 4x20, which is as large as I can fit in my target space. In fact, this display fits to within 1mm. No other manufacturer had a display like this (all either too large or too small). The display uses EL backlighting and an HD44780 compatible controller.
The power supply was hard to find. I wanted this to trick me into thinking I had a quality machine, so I did not want to go the inverter route. Instead, I wanted a 12V DC power supply. Searched high and low I did. Then one day on the CAJUN message board (cajun.current.nu) someone mentioned this wonderful supply. Only cost $15, supplied the AT voltages, and ran off of 11-13V DC.
To control the player, I bought an irman off the web (www.evation.com/irman) for $35 + $3 shipping. It arrived in only one week, which is quite a feat given that it was shipped from The Netherlands to Boston. This little device connects via the serial port and can use any infrared remote control to control your computer. The buttons are configurable through software. This is a really cool device.
The remote I stole from my mom's Cambridge Soundworks Model 88. They make great stereo equipment, and this is their answer to the Bose Wave Radio. IMO, the sound quality is nearly equal (my mom owns one of each). The buttons on the remote aren't really suited to this application, but they work well enough. Besides, the remote is very small and very thin.
