For now, some pics. First is a shot of the motherboard I'll be using.
Yes, that's a full board with built-in video and networking. It's an Advantech PCI SBC, although it doesn't need a PCI slot to run. It can get power either through the bus or the molex on the lower right.
BX chipset, socket 370, will run any chip from a Celeron 300 to a Celeron or PIII 1.1Ghz(100MHZ bus). Currently have a Celeron 566 on it, but a Celeron 850 is on the way.
The video is Trident, which is no barn-burner, BUT it has MPEG decode assist and onboard support for an LCD. Too bad a compatible LCD would cost me more than your average analog 14" screen due to the inverter and cable costs. Not sure if I'll be using any kind of screen at first, but it will be an option.
Board also has the standard 2 serial, 1 parallel, floppy, and one IDE connector. Why only one? Check the next picture.
The second IDE channel is used to connect a standard Compact Flash card, and it's even bootable. The 32MB is my test card, I've got a 340MB IBM microdrive that will be used in the final PC.
You can also see the two SODIMM slots in this shot, currently have 2x64MB PC100 in there. I figure 128MB should be good enough, this will more than likely be running a stripped down Windows 98se with Winamp as the shell.
And here's piece #3.
The basic 24x slimline LCD drive with 40pin adapter. Not sure if this will be the drive I end up using, if I add an LCD it'll definitely be replaced with a DVD drive. Plus I'm also hoping I can get a 44 pin drive since the SBC has a 44 pin IDE connector. The SBC came with a two 40 pin device cable that has a 44 pin connector for the SBC side. I'll only be using one device on that channel, so I'd rather replace the bulky cable, CD adapter, and drive with something simpler.
I'm currently looking for a few more parts before I get too far into this:
- USB soundcard, something simple. The SBC has no real expansion without a backplane, so USB is my only option right now. There is a 3 PCI slot backplane, but I haven't found it anywhere for an acceptable price.
- El Cheapo powered USB hub, related to the above. I have a USB wireless card and a USB remote I may use, plus I'd like to use one of my USB drives to hold mp3s. Those ports will disappear fast when there's no PCI slots
- Power supply, which brings up it's own issues
-- CarPC, so I could use an inverter and a 120 volt PSU or a DC-DC PSU
-- The inverter adds another piece of equipment, but it also lets me run other devices and I already have an inverter.
-- The inverter would also let me use a desktop AT PSU, which is big in size, but again is something I already have.
-- I'm limited to an AT PSU if I use a desktop PSU, ATX is a pain in the ass to make work without a backplane.
-- Another option for a 120 volt PSU would be one pulled from a SCSI hard drive case, although I'd need at least 40 watts. More would be nice, but I run into physical size issues where I could just as easily use the desktop AT PSU.
-- Another issue, the SBC can be run from only the 5 volt line, so I could even go with a Wall Wart or brick supply. BUT when run from 5 volts, the fan header on the SBC doesn't work, so I'd have to rig the fan with 5 volts or put in another fan.
-- Almost all the above also applies to DC-DC supplies, but I haven't really been able to find any DC-DC supplies that can supply the juice. I need ~30 watts on the 5 volt side, and I'd like about the same on 12 volt so I'd have the option to hook up some other devices to the same supply; an LCD, one of my drive cases, etc.
I'm probably going to end up just using the inverter and AT desktop PSU. I'm planning on building this all into a console for my van, so I'll have the space. I'd still prefer to use as small a PSU as I can, though.
My end goal is to use an external drive case to hold the mp3 files with an option of playback from an optical drive. Controls will initially be through a Winamp plugin and buttons that connect to the serial port. Overkill for only mp3s, but with the right hardware and software it should be quite capable.