[clue-tech] Low-memory laptop for a jukebox

[J. Joseph Benavidez]

On Thursday 27 July 2006 2:44 pm, Chris wrote:
> Hey there everyone,
>
> I'm looking (well, right now, just thinking about) creating a
> jukebox-type of machine out of an old laptop that I have, and I'm
> looking for some suggestions on setup, distribution choice  ... or
> someone to talk me out of it because I'm just asking too much out of an
> old machine.
>
> I've ripped my CD's to MP3 and have them stored centrally on my main
> machine here at home.  I can export the directory they are stored on as
> NFS or SMB, it doesn't matter to me but I would probably use nfs since I
> don't have any windows machines.
>
> The machine that I want to use as the jukebox (and that will be
> connected to my main stereo) is an older laptop that I have.  It's an
> IBM iSeries, which I believe is an old pentium 266MhZ machine with
> around 128MB of ram.  It was running Windows 98 before I got ahold of
> it.
>
> What I"d like to do is install linux on the laptop and connect it to my
> home stereo so that I can play all of my MP3's from the laptop which in
> turn is just pulling the MP3's off of an NFS share on the home server.
> Would be nice if the laptop was running some sort of Webserver so that I
> could just click on a filename and have it play out of the home system.
>
> Have heard of MythTV and the like but I think that this system isn't
> powerful enough to run that.  Maybe one day I'll upgrade the hardware
> but right now I'm just looking for a geek project.
>
> Any suggestions?  What distro should I throw on here (no need for it to
> run X), any suggestions for a jukebox, etc?  I've looked at puppy and
> DSL but not sure; I've always used the big boys before (RedHat, SuSE,
> mandrake, Ubuntu, etc).  Also, the CD drive is toast so I'm going to
> have to do a floppy boot and network install if that makes any
> difference.
>
> Thanks in advance ..
>
> -Chris
>

Hi,

Well, here's _one_ way to do it. I have a bunch of squeezeboxes[1]. What you 
do is install a (free) perl-based server (called slimserver[2]) on your media 
server, and it streams music to these squeezebox devices. However, you don't 
have to have a dedicated squeezebox... you can also just point any ol' music 
player to the server. For instance, you can just use the command-line based 
mplayer:

    mplayer http://mymediaserver:9000/stream.mp3

You'd run that on your laptop.

You control playlists and your music library with slimserver's web interface 
(http://mymediaserver:9000).

btw, since mplayer (or whatever player you use) has buffering, it may take a 
few seconds before you actually hear the changes you make on slimserver (eg, 
skipping the current track.)

I use fedora-based distro's, so I just installed the rpm package.

Now that I think of it, I guess you could use any streaming server. 
Streamsicle's another one that I know of. Java-based. But the same basic 
idea. Use a simple media player on your laptop with streaming software on 
your media server.

Good luck. Having a centralized music library's the best.

j.joseph

[1]http://www.slimdevices.com
[2]http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_features.html
[3]http://larvalabs.com/streamsicle/screenshots.html