needed Hardware-components:

• Mainboard (min. pentiumI)
  Sound and VGA onboard is great but optional
• unneded CD-player
• Joystickport for button-readout
• Network-card for booting
• LCD for output
• good cooling-body (??) because we hate fan-noise
• joystick-cable
• low-heat-producing power-supply
• joystick-cable (button-readout)
• parport-cable (for lcd)
• cd-rom drive
• Disk-drive or eprom-burner (for netbooting)
• lots of time

How to install the different components:

LCD:

I use an LCD-Point-Matrix Module with integrated C-MOS-Microprozessor.
You can get it from Electonic-Discounter like the german Conrad-Electronic (Product ID = 187275)

It looks like this:

You have to connect it onto your Parport. Get a Printer-Cable, cut it it the middle and use it to attach the LCD to your Mainboard.
(detailed instructions, how to connect the LCD will follow soon, or read the instructions of the lcd-0.15-Drivers).
Remove the display, which came with your CD-player and attach your own Display instead:

Front-Panel

remove the front-panel and all unneeded components on it, but leave the buttons, we will need them.

Then use a joystick-cable and attach it to the buttons:
Button 1 : Pin 4 and 2
Button 2 : Pin 4 and 7
Button 3 : Pin 4 and 10
Button 4 : Pin 4 and 12

At the moment i just use 4 Buttons (Play, Stop forward, Open drive). More buttons are possible.

CD-Rom

I use no CD-Drive for now, but it will follow soon (just waiting for a DVD, so that I can use my old CD-Rom in my mp3-box)

Floppy-Drive

You will need a Floppy drive to boot from, as long as you dont have a EPROM-Burner to make your own Boot-rom.

Power Supply

I think there will not be enough space to add a complete power-supply into you CD-Player. So you have to remove all unnecessary Parts an just put the pure transformator into our mp3box (DANGER!)

I disabled the fan, because of its notorious noise.

On ATX-Boards you have to press the power-button several seconds to power the board down. This feature should be disabled in your bios, because is feels strange on a CD-Player.
You have to connect the Power-Jumper on your Board with the Power-Button in your CD-Player. The method, how to do this, varies from Player to Player.

Final state

All connectors on the mainboard:

(You see, I still need thick ethernet. I added a cable for input and one for output (not on this image), so i can mix different sound-sources). The Parport links the Mainboard with the LCd and the Soundcard in the front is just used to connect the buttons with a joystick-port -- the onboard-joystickport doesnt work for now -- Linux-drivers are still beta.)

If all components are installed, it should look somehow like this:

High-res image

The rearsite of the MP3-Box looks this way:

You can see the adapter for thick-ethernet, ontop of this one a connection for Sound-output, in the middle two connections for Audio-in (just one supported for now) and the power-cable on the right.)

I hope I could convince you, my MP3-Box is more than just vapourware

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