The Stereo PC

The Problem:

We have our main PC in the bedroom. We have the nice stereo in the living room. The bedroom computer has our entire music library stored on a hard drive, and we also have our CD library stored in the bedroom. It is much more convenient to have another PC in the living room that can access the digital library for playback through the stereo than bringing CDs back and forth, so I decided to hook one up. No problem. Until it's decided that adding an ugly beige box (or even a nicer stylish case, for that matter) just doesn't fit anywhere. Clutter is the enemy of my wife, and therefore by extension, it's mine too.

The Solution:

I looked at an old stereo that we'd been using for its CD player (the turntable sounded awful) and put two and two together. Or, to be more precise, I put stereo and computer together.

The Result:

Looks pretty unremarkable, right? I tried not to cut the face up too much. Unfortunately the missing CD drive door has left a bit of a gaping hole at this point in time, but a trip to the hardware store for some hinges should allow me to replace that. It's just a question of finding some spare time to a) get to the store, and b) disassemble the thing to the point where this repair can be made. Minor detail. The DVD-ROM is accessible, and that's more important.

Here's the view from the back. As you can see, this is clearly not a stereo inside anymore. I've mounted the motherboard (some socket A model, I can't remember) on the side of the box, and in an inverted position when compared to the typical ATX box. Note the PS/2 (mouse and keyboard) ports at the bottom. The CPU fan that cools the 1.11 GHz AMD Athlon processor is also visible from this angle. The power supply unit is actually glued to the side using Amazing Goop. Awesome stuff. A friend of mine in my university days used to fix his shoes with it, and I recently reattached the side view mirror to our car with it. But I digress.

In addition to being able to use the stereo's power button to switch on the PC, I also managed to make use of the stereo's LEDs. The power LED lights up when the unit is turned on just as it did before I gutted it to put an old AMD Athlon system inside. I also found a use for that little LED that flickers as the tuner tries to lock into an FM signal. Whenever the hard drive spins up, this LED will flicker or light up, depending on the amount of activity, of course. It's a neat effect if I may say so, and it's particularly cool when the computer is really working hard. One would think that wouldn't be too difficult a task with Windows Vista running a system that only has 512 MB of RAM, but this system runs pretty smoothly. Granted it's only running the Home Basic version along with Winamp, Firefox and VLC Media Player, but the point remains. Not too bad. We now have a nice jukebox for the living room.

UPDATE: Phase II
UPDATE 2: Phase III

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The Stereo PC: Front View