And I am jumping on the bandwagon by planning on making an MP3 player for my car.

There seems to be quite a few interested people out there about my little project. But currently, this page is just mindless babbling about comments and suggestion that people have sent to me. I should, sometime this year, have some designs put up here so that you may actually find this page useful.

Ah, well... someone requested for the MP3 encoder source codes. You can find sample programs with source codes from the www.mpeg.org site. Go to the MP3 link, then to the Software section and then find the links you are interested in and be sure to note the text that prints "(with source code)".

There was some debate as to what the cd-rom format and data encoding scheme was between the audio CD and data CD. I have found a good little article about this and if you are interested in reading/knowing a little bit more about this then see my CD Info Page.

Another interested person on the net has suggested using the PC104. For those of you who don't know what the PC104 is, check out: http://www.eg3.com/indc/indcxpc1.htm

There's some great information about this little gizmo. This looks like a neat little thing to play with.
In a nut shell:

_The PC/104 and PC/104+ Standards_

PC/104 is an ISA-based embedded computer standard. PC/104+ is an extension

that includes a second, 32 bit PCI-based bus. The boards tend to be around

3.6" x 3.8" x 0.9" with connectors that allow you to stack them up or across

lego-style. There are hundreds of vendors.

This is a very fertile area for those experimenting in wearable computers,

robotics, car-based systems, or anyplace else small computers are needed. 

A better place to start, would be the "data base list" of PC104 manufacturers. Just start looking at the products available and see what you can/need to put together: http://www.controlled.com/pc104/products.html

So, I would get the following:

• One Core Module (DX4 66 or 100) - any one in the CPU Boards section will do
• One Disk Controller - www.ampro.com/products/minimod/mm-fi.html has a nice one
• One Sound/Video Module - www.inside-us.com/products/amm686.html and
  One Video display (touch screen anyone? :-) - www.inside-us.com/products/mtouch.html
  these are some niffty little items for your all in one needs for audio/video applications
• One Power Unit and Case Enclosure - http://www.parvus.com/products.html is a pretty good place to start

And there seems to be someone who has built something similar to this. Except, he used one of those all in one cards that costs quite a bit of change. Here is the scoop: The MP3mobile!

There was a stand alone MP3 module that would work great with this little contained unit. But I, for the life of me, can't find the web site that offered that plug-in module.

And finally, for those who want to know more about MP3's and MPEG.org doesn't cut it, then you might be interested in this guy's little information site: http://members.aol.com/et3bahn/mp3/mp3info.html

Now on to some conversion and info (jibber-jabber):

There was one person out there who asked about putting a computer in his '83 Cadillac Limo with 18" woofers. I told him if he's got the juice to do it, "Then the more power to you." But if you want to be running a 486 (and a monitor) then you need a pretty good Power Inverter (those little devices you plug into your cigarette lighters and then to your TV/VCR machine for those long @$$ road trips). Or you can line your machine in with one of the power amps - oh wait, that's a bad idea. Don't do that!

Anyways, I would recommend buying a laptop and just play the MP3's there. All you would need to do now is to plug in your audio outs into the car's tape deck, line-in plug (for those CD ready car radios), or an antenna switch-line (for those non-CD ready car radios). And you can also use a power inverter to power your notebook where the power drain wouldn't be as much as the large desktop machines.
(And then, you could probably get youself one o' those maps on a CD with a GPS thingie so you can really go on a major road trip.)

Another person asked me about an MP3-walkman. It is possible. Again, you can just get a laptop and play'em off of that. There are some MP3 chips out there but building the device as a stand-alone unit with Flash-ROM's are out of the question. The project would become way too expensive and not too practical. Keep in mind, MP3's averages 4 Megs a song. Course, jogging around with laptop hanging around your neck probably wouldn't be fun either.