The Problem:

It has been decided that we need a home theater computer (HTPC). Cases designed for the purpose are either expensive, ugly, or they won’t fit properly with the rest of the audio/video components on the shelf. Besides, building one will be much more fun.

The Solution:

I found a nice Sony 5-disc CD player at a yard sale for $5. The plan is to cram a micro-ATX motherboard complete with all the necessities for a fully-functional machine inside. There are plenty of boards with on-board graphics and digital audio that can handle HD video as well as surround sound, so that will help keep costs down and the build simpler. The case is just about the right size for a standard power supply unit, and there should be no need for add-in cards with Ethernet, video and audio all on-board. I also plan to install an LCD display to replace the one in the original CD player.

The Results (So Far):

First, disassembling the CD player. This involved a lot of unscrewing, but not much else. Fortunately, even though the outer casing was screwed right into the internals of the CD player, the four parts that make up the case fit together quite nicely afterwards.

The CD Player	Taken apart
Another view	Reassembled, minus the internals

The Results (Continued):

I’ve finally found some time (and parts) to get this project moving, albeit a bit slowly. I obtained a power supply unit (PSU) with a noisy fan from an old machine. Since I had an old fan lying around, I decided to put the parts together (I’ll probably replace the fan with more efficient model later).

Once I took the PSU apart to replace the fan, I decided to experiment a little and cut the back plate of the CD player as little as possible to keep a nice, clean look.

Power supply unit, opened up and fan removed	PSU cut, preparing the back panel
Holes cut in back panel for PSU fan, switches and power cable	Fan, grille, switches test fit

I made a bracket to support the PSU to the back panel of the case and soldered the wires that I had to cut to remove the backside of the PSU:

Bracket to secure the PSU to the back of the case	Soldered and powered up without a hitch!

It powered up fine (the fan can be seen spinning in the second photo above). All that needs to be done now is a little filing and sanding and the PSU section of this build will be complete. Another hole needs to be cut for the motherboard’s I/O shield, and the back panel will be ready for finishing.

Not much room left inside	3.5" hole cut for a memory card reader

On the topic of finishing, there’s a lot of work to do on the front panel. Observant readers may have noticed the CD player’s missing buttons in addition to the rough cuts around the memory card reader face.

The card reader was chosen as an alternative to an optical drive. As can be seen in the photo of the inside of the case, there isn’t much room in there for a bulky DVD-ROM. Even a slim laptop drive would extend back too far for comfort, and there needs to be some room for airflow to keep this machine cool and quiet. An OS like Ubuntu has easy-to-use tools to create a bootable image on a USB flash drive with all of the files necessary to install the system. Media will be accessed via network, or, if need be, flash drive or memory card, of course.

The Main Components Have Arrived

CPU, motherboard and memory

Powering this HTPC will be a Gigabyte AM2/AM2+/AM3 AMD motherboard. It’s got onboard ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics capable of playing 1080p Full HD video with minimal CPU requirements, and high definition audio available over the HDMI or optical outputs. The processor is an AMD Athlon64 X2 7750 Black Edition dual-core chip, and I’ve got 2GB (for now) of G-Skill DDR2 1066 RAM. All this is more than adequate for the 1080i/720p TV that it will ultimately be connected to.

Still to come: an LCD to replace the CD player’s original display, hard drive (if I choose not to re-use an old one) and remote.

updates to come as they happen.