Hello All

Just wanted to share some pics of my latest project, an MP3 file server for my home network. Many of you gave me excellent ideas about how to go about this and it has all come to fruition today. The box is a heavily modified (inside) old Sun SparcClassic X that I got off of Ebay for $5.00...The Mobo is a VIA EPIA 800 Mini-ITX with an embedded 800 MHz C3 processor. The top of the case holds my old 40 GB HDD with all of my tunes on it...I had to hack the Flex ATX power supply to mount it on the side of the case but it seems to work well there. Hope you enjoy the pics....

and another....

and finally....

Very cool. Can you use it as a ripper, too? How are songs loaded onto it?

Answering my own question: I don't see a CD drive, only a floppy drive, so it must be network-only.

Hey Tony

You are right, there is no disk drive in it at all, the VIA board comes with intregrated 10/100 LAN so I use VNC (Thanks Robricc!) to control it from my main workstation and upload/download the tunes through my router...

Wow, came out really nice! Congratulations.

Thanks for the compliments guys....

I'm glad it's finally done so I can go out into the sunshine again ha ha

BTW, here's a size comparison for you "smaller is better" people out there (and the Tim's cup is regular sized thank you)

very cool. Me jealous.

Wow. Great work! Do you think you could fit a pci dial up modem in that case?

Thanks! The MoBo does have one PCI slot so I could if it was not too tall of a card....

You going to bring that to the meet and show it off to us?

Theres a 90degree adapter that should work. Thanks for these ideas, I think I'm going to build a dial up/mp3/file/firewall server that I can put somewhere in the living room. How quiet is it, and does it really need any fans?

I will, but it's really just a blue box with a small mobo in it ha ha...

As for quiet, the C3 processor comes with a small fan (no noise) and heatsink. It can run without fans for low power applications but I don't mind a little bit of noise if my components last longer, besides, my main system (on the bottom shelf of the comp desk) has four fans going so it really doesn't matter if the music box is quiet or not ...I have a large fan blowing on the music box power supply right now (and it's REALLY noisy) but I am going to be exchanging the PS for a smaller one next week from a surplus IBM NetVista case. The Flex ATX PS was hacked in just to get the music box up and running. The case is well ventilated so it will be whisper quiet once I make the mod.