PDA

View Full Version : ClunkerJunker as a Juke Box



Tom_ZeCat
04-15-2008, 11:00 PM
I'm planning to build a Media Center PC to hook up to my home entertainment center. I want one that organizes all my music, and records TV, etc. However, I'm still a ways away from that in terms of research and money.

However, for right now I've got an old clunker junker that is just collecting dust. It's an HP Pavillion Pentium III with a 17 gig hard drive that originally came with 96 MB of RAM. Since I got it I maxed out the RAM at 256 MB, and added a second hard drive, a 90 gig one.

The original OS that came with it was Windows 98 SE. I changed it to a dual boot machine with Win 98 on the original 17 gig drive and Windows 2000 on the new 90 gig one, which I also gave an NTFS partition. The 17 gig drive, of course, is FAT 32 since NTFS is not supported by Win 98.

This is a computer I no longer use. Though the Windows 2000 install was nice for stability, I never got the sound card to work under Win 2K. Arg. I simply could not find a driver that would work.

This machine is obviously not up to the task of recording TV. However, it could conceivably work fine as a juke box. That 90 gig drive is plenty of room for MP3s. So I'm thinking of wiping and converting that 90 gig drive to FAT 32 and reinstalling Win 98 on the 17 gig drive, wiping everything else out. Then I'll load up some good MP3 playing software and my entire music collection onto that 90 gig drive.

Sound like a cool plan? I've been using MP3 DVDs in my DVD player in my home entertainment center, which works pretty cool, but that 8.5 gig double layer disk takes a LONG time to load. I'm thinking if I find some MP3 playing software that runs well under Win 98 and isn't too memory demanding, I might have something that works pretty well until I can get the bucks and research together to build my Media Center PC. I'll output the VGA signal to the TV. And I have available RCA ports on my stereo tuner where my CD player used to be. In fact, I started using MP3 DVDs and MP3 CDs in my DVD player when my CD player died.

So what I'm wondering is this:
1. How do I hook up my VGA signal to my TV? My TV is not a high def one, but it's a nice analog one and does have an S-Video port.
2. How do I hook the computer's audio port into the RCA ports on my stereo tuner?
3. What MP3 playing software should I use on this clunker machine? I hope I can find something that runs under Win 98 and has a lot of flexibility. I use MediaMonkey on my regular PC (A home-built Athlon 3700 machine with 1.5 gig of RAM and two internal hard drives, a 250 gig one and a 350 gig one.) I'd like something that gives me a lot of flexibility. I'd like to be able to play albums I like in the order they were originally on the album, but I'd also like to be able to do things like tell the computer to play random rock songs or random classical or even random 70s rock.
4. Is Win 98 the way to go since this clunker was designed for that OS? Or should I consider Linux or Windows XP?
5. How should I go about converting the 90 gig drive from NTFS to FAT32? Should I boot to a DOS CD (the floppy doesn't work) and then type a format command? Or should I boot to the 90 gig drive in Win 2K and format from there? Or should I use a utility like Partition Magic?

The Wise Monkey
04-16-2008, 09:07 AM
You could probably get away with installing XP on the machine, because this gives you much more choice for a media player.

As for which one to use, I have always been a big fan of Winamp.

shyster
04-16-2008, 11:44 AM
I also prefer winamp, but I remember that it used to have memory leaks, which could affect a lower end system like yours. Of course that was years ago so I would like to believe they are fixed by now. I would not actually know since I never update my software unless it has an auto updater.

Although from what you describe that you would like to have you player do, I think I-tunes might be the way to go. I believe that it can do all those things you were asking for like playing random from this genre or that. Plus it has a built in .wav to mp3 conversion system for moving your cd collection onto your computer. Although for this program I believe you would have to have xp installed. I-tunes is also kind of a system whore from what I remember so you might not be even able to run it on your current system.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that FAT32 has a maximum recognizeable hard drive size. That being the case I do not know if it can even recognize a 90gig hard drive.

If we ignore that speculation above however the ways to go about it would be to boot to cd and format the 90 gig drive with the windows 98 cd. Since it is a seperate drive I believe you could also do something just from windows 98, probably partition magic in this case.

Tom_ZeCat
04-16-2008, 10:05 PM
I've downloaded Winamp and am checking it out. It will probably come down to that or MediaMonkey since I'm really not a fan of iTunes.


Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that FAT32 has a maximum recognizeable hard drive size. That being the case I do not know if it can even recognize a 90gig hard drive.

I seem to remember something about that. I'll look it up. If it does have that limitation, it's no biggie. I can just format the drive into two logical partitions.

I appreciate the tips.

Oh, and I won't need any antivirus software. I'm not connecting the computer to the Internet.