Need help with headless webradio box

Forum: Multimedia
Topic: Need help with headless webradio box
started by: Boomslang

Posted by Boomslang on April 22 2006,03:17

Hello, this is my first post here. I have, however, learned much from everyone already, and so I thank you. I am still very much a noob, so I apologize if I say anything stupid.

My current project is a headless box using DSL to stream internet radio wirelessly into my bedroom. Ideally, I was going to remove the HD in favor of a Compact Flash card, but the IDE to CF adapter I bought from eBay was DOA. Huge bummer, because the HD I have is old and loud. I'm trying to keep this thing quiet.

So far, I have a motherboard from a Dell Dimension L933R with onboard ethernet, sound, and video. The sound works, the ethernet works, the video is shaky but works. I'm running 128mb RAM with a 933mhz PentiumIII. I removed the floppy and CD-ROM drives, installed a D-Link DWL-G520 PCI card (which works using madwifi) swapped the loud stock CPU fan for a larger ex-PSU fan and wired it to the 5V line coming from the PSU's floppy drive power connector (runs slower and quieter now) and if it weren't for the HD the setup would be next to inaudible.

I have the thing set up to boot into runlevel 2 command line, set the speaker and PCM volume higher than default, bring ath0 up, and run MPlayer with a playlist filled with radio stream addresses. I know I can use hotkeys to change volume and station, but I don't want to use a whole keyboard when I only need 4 keys. Is there a way I could cut down a whole keyboard, or would that completely mess up everything inside?

I have a joystick with a directional hat on it which I would like to use as my playlist navigation/volume control. However, I can't get the joystick to work. It hooks up via the gameport. I ran [ sudo insmod joydev ] like the Wiki said, but it's not working out for me. Does anyone have any other tips to get this thing working? It's a CH Flightstick Pro, I believe.

Also, bootup takes a long time. Is there any way I can suspend/standby the computer (similar to the Windows standby)? This would be easier, because I could then switch it on and listen to the radio without having to wait a long time. The mobo has an Intel i815e chipset, I think. I'm not sure if it supports ACPI or APM, but it may.

To sum it up- Need help enabling joystick/drivers. Would like some tips to figure out ACPI.

Thanks.

Posted by doobit on April 26 2006,19:36

I can't answer about the joystick, but it sounds like a fun project. DSL does support APM and APCI power management for standby. The settings are normally available in the system BIOS. FYI, you may want to take a look at DSL-N, which is in Alpha testing right now. It has the 2.6 kernel and is already packaged with mplayer.