This is not a new idea, it has come up several times in the past. Recently I acquired an 700Mhz Celeron Gateway. The system was tiny, and opening it up revealed a mini-ATX board and an equally small power supply.

The plan is to replace the all of the stereo electronics with the PC, interface the existing buttons and display, and connect the dual-cassette deck to an audio input. The non-functional 3-disc CD changer will be replaced by a single CD-ROM drive or possibly a CD-RW drive. An LIRC-compatible infrared receiver will be used to provide remote control functionality. The whole system will have little hard-drive space, relying on a network server or streaming stations. Network connectivity will more than likely be wireless, I recently purchased a USB wireless network adapter. At some point I'd like to find a cheap PC-based FM tuner (PCI or USB) that is GNU/Linux compatible.

The most frustration problem with the board I'm using is that it with virtually no ports other than USB. External connections consist of 5x USB, VGA out, Line out, Line in, Mic, and Modem. Internally there are three audio headers (CD-ROM, Video and one other), and one RS-232 serial header. This leaves USB for keyboard (which will not normally be used), display/front-button interface, and network. The serial port will be used for the infrared receiver. The internal CD-ROM drive will connect to one audio header, the cassette deck to another, and an external audio input will possibly connect to the third.

From a software standpoint the system will run Zenwalk Linux, formerly MiniSlack Linux. I've used it before for a few different systems, including a automatic CD/DVD duplicator. All control will happen either over the network (whether through a web or other interface), or by infrared remote control.

The goal is to build a complete replacement for my ailing stereo, with additional functionality to integrate it into a networked environment. This goal can be met with the hardware I currently have, with two exceptions. Currently there will be no FM radio support and there will be no internal amplifier. I may be able to correct the second exception by either building a new amplifier out of the old components (outside of my expertise), or by including a small amplifier inside of the device (pulled from a set of PC speakers for instance).

The biggest obstacle currently is constructing a USB interface for the VFD display and the front-panel buttons. After some research and reverse-engineering I have determined that I will be able to control the VFD display with a custom controller. I talked to a friend who took a number of electronics classes and we have developed a rough plan and selected the needed hardware. Hopefully interface construction can begin next week.

This has a lot of potential to be a fun and extremely useful project. I'm hoping there will be no major setbacks with hardware compatibility or simply making it all fit in the existing case.