So, as previously mentioned, I was building an mp3 player. It worked for a solid fifteen minutes before the hard drive crashed.

Well, I've replaced the hard drive, and made a few changes that I hope will keep it from happening again (A possibly unsuccessful attempt to make it mount the primary filesystem as read-only).

At any rate, it seems to be working now, though I want to add another control knob to hit a mouse button triggering a soft shutdown in the hopes of keeping this from happening again.

But now that the gift is given and received, I can reveal what it was all about:

I stuck a computer into the chassis of a 30s-style tombstone radio. The body only cost me about thirteen dollars (Two bucks plus shipping), the pedestal is made from scrap wood, and the computer was given to me by a friend's wife when she moved out of town. The speakers were an old pair I picked up years ago, the mouse came with my newest computer (Sacrificed because I had an optical mouse to use instead). The most expensive single component I had to buy for it were the three drawer knobs I bought for controls (About $4 and change a piece). The three knobs on the front control the volume, power, and track. The body came with three drilled holes for the knobs, marked for volume, tuning, and band. I drilled the connector for the volume knob directly into the original plastic volume dial for the speakers, attached the tuner dial to a dowel which presses against the Y-motion wheel from the mouse, and attached the band wheel to a dowel with various nails stuck in it to hit the controls. On the upsweep, toward the AM postion, it hits the power button for the PC. On the downsweep, toward a band which I've never heard of, it clicks one of the mouse buttons, causing the software to pause. One of the other mouse buttons now causes a shutdown. I haven't quite worked out what to hook that to.

For the tuner dial, I found a photograph of a compatable tuner dial on the internet, printed it out, and mounted it over the relevant opening. Right smack in the center, I drilled a hole and mounted a yellow LED to illuminate the dial. It doesn't look quite as natural as I'd hoped, but the other choices I had seemed likely to be even worse (I considered a cold cathode, which would have been (a) too bright, (b) too big, and (c) Too cold-cathodeish. I also tried an incandescent bulb, which burned out instantly. The LED takes its power from the motherboard's power LED jack, and glows apropriately. If I'd had more space and time, I might have tried to wire up a cluster of LEDs to the power supply, but I was on a timetable).

In all, I think it ended up looking quite convincing. If you find that hard to believe, have a look at these grainy, low-resolution pictures (Really got to get a proper digital camera): http://photos.trenchcoatsoft.com/thumbnails.php?album=5.

Cool? I like to think so.