Player Details
Hardware:
Motherboard, CPU, and RAM
A socket 7 motherboard is needed since a 486 will not have enough power
to play MP3 files. A Pentium 75 should be enough, but it never hurts
to have a little more power than needed. 16MB of RAM is the minimum
that Windows 98 needs. I happened to obtain 24MB so that's what I'm
using.. Not sure if Windows 95 will install and operate with less,
and I don't know the requirements for Winamp, but you may be able to get
away with as little as 8MB of RAM. However, to be safe you should
have at least 16MB.
An ECP parallel port is recommended to get maximum compatibility and
performance with the LCD panel.
In the BIOS setup be sure to disable all halting on errors. The
system must be able to boot with no monitor and keyboard attached.
Sound
For sound you can use any sound card that you can get working with Winamp.
In other words, the sound card will have to be compatible with Windows
95/98. While Winamp does provide support for 8-bit playback, a 16-bit
sound card is recommended. A line out on the sound card is also needed
to ensure a proper connection to your stereo.
Hard Drive
Any size hard drive capable of holding Windows should work. The size
you want should depend on how much music you want to store in the player.
The Windows installation should take up less than 200MB of space.
Software
I did a custom install of Windows and selected no extra features.
The bottom line here is that the absolute minimum installation is needed.
Even after installing there are a few files that can be deleted (such as
the help files).
Configure Winamp to launch the plugin automatically, and put Winamp
in the Windows Startup folder so that Winamp will launch when Windows loads.
LCD Display
The LCD display I have is a 40x4 LED backlit display (Seiko M4024).
Any display should work as long as the controller is compatible with the
HD44780 controller. From what I know the HD44780 is the most common
controller for character based LCD displays. The LCD Display plugs
into the PC's parallel port. See LCD
Connection details.
If you don't know where to buy an LCD display, try www.eio.com
(that's where I got mine).
IR Receiver
The IR Receiver plugs into a COM port. Check Universal
Infrared Receiver by Ties Bos for details.
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