Let me start off by saying that I randomly started writing this in October of 2020–realized that I was a year early for the 20 year anniversary of the iPod–decided to post this in October of 2021 instead–and then promptly forgot about it until a couple days ago… I had done a bit of research last year, and I know I’ve forgotten a lot since then, but I really want to get this Part 1 up today. It’s rough, haphazard, and pretty much completely unedited. I’ll follow up with a Part 2 soon–I hope…maybe.

Twenty years ago today, Apple announced their breakthrough portable music player that packed “up to 1,000 CD-quality songs” and sold for around $400 2001 dollars (that’s just under $620 adjusted for inflation in 2021). Awesome right? Except I already had a portable music box that held not 1,000 songs, but up to 1,000 collections of 1,000 songs. And it cost next to nothing because it ran free software on hardware that I already had laying around. I spent some money on fancying it up (yes, probably far too much), but the bones of the system cost me nothing.

I originally got the idea for a computer-based portable mp3 player after reading an article in Maximum Linux magazine where a stripped down linux distro was used to build an in-car mp3 player using old computer parts. I was intrigued, but still new enough to linux that the idea of building a similar system of my own seemed too daunting of a challenge (honestly it still does), so I never built it. I don’t recall exactly how I came across it, but my music box was based off of the MCAS system put together by Tom Hammond. MCAS is a Win 95/98 based mp3 player that runs in DOS mode, although Windows is necessary for creating installation disks. MCAS supports playing mp3 files off the computer’s hard drive, off of a commercially produced music CD, or off of a disc crammed as full of as many mp3s as you could fit. You can build your own playlists, shuffle,… loads of options.

The hardware requirements for MCAS are super basic. All that is needed is is a 75 MHz processor, 4 MB of RAM, a num-pad (or full keyboard), an inverter to power it off of the 12V in the car, and however large of a HD you need to fit your music collection. If you want to keep it super simple, you can set the system up with audio commands (it reads the menus to you), or you can spring for an LCD screen that runs off of a parallel port.

THOR v1

My music box is powered by the remains of my first computer, a 400 MHz K6-2 system that I replaced with a water cooled Athlon system sometime around the turn of the millennium. Of course I didn’t want to use just any old computer case for this, so I stuffed everything into a large 5.56mm ammo can. The motherboard is an ASUS P5A, and was originally attached to a piece of leftover MDF that was interference fit into the bottom of the case, with slots cut into the side of the case for I/O attachment. The sound comes from an Sound Blaster 16 ISA card, and video is handled by an unknown VGA card (I’m afraid to pull it out for a better look at this point because the back-plate of the card is epoxied into the case). The PSU was whatever had come in the computer I scavenged parts out of, spray-painted a lovely brown color. There was a lovely control box with a num-pad and a little vacuum-florescent display, but they both seem to have gone missing over the years. I had the hair-brained idea to set the thing up to play DVDs at some point, so I named the computer THOR for Theater for Home Or Road.

I got the system up and running, and installed it in my ‘78 Chevy K-10. It just barely fit behind the seat, and pumped sound into a 3.5mm aux jack on the CD player in the truck. It worked okay, but had a tendency to overheat (poor air flow in the case in general, and certainly behind the seat), and the sound was pretty sketchy at times. I eventually traced the sound issues to the inverter I was using (read: my dad told me it was the inverter…). The inverter puts out a lovely square wave, which is just fine for most uses, but there was apparently not any filtering happening in the computer’s power supply and the square waves were distorting the sound output. A few ferrite chokes smoothed everything out, and cleaned the sound up quite a bit.

Version 2

To address the overheating issues, I cut the side out of the case and replaced it with a piece of plexiglass with fans mounted in it to help air flow. I also changed the way the motherboard mounted by cutting down the motherboard tray out of the case the original computer had come in–wish I still had that case -_- I had switched trucks to an ‘03 Ranger with an extended cab by this point, and the computer lived a much happier life thanks to the fans and more room around the case. This setup lasted for a little while, but I got tired of the inverter being in the way all the time, and the num-pad shorted out at one point, so I pulled THOR out for an overhaul.

Version 3

The first upgrade that happened for this go round was a new power supply. I found a DC-DC ATX power supply from Opus Solutions intended for automotive computer applications that fit much better in my case, and eliminated the need for an inverter. I got it installed and bought a replacement num-pad, but don’t remember if I ever actually powered the thing on or not and it’s been sitting in various closets ever since. Here it is as it exists now, looking just the same as it did nearly two decades ago the last time I worked on other than the yellowing where the sound card and video card back-plates are epoxied onto the plexi.

Case Front

Case Back

Top Popped

Glorious Internals don’t worry, the battery’s been removed–no leaks

DC-DC Power Supply

MCAS

The original website for MCAS is amazingly still up (here), and looks just the way I remember it. I recently shot a message to the email listed there, but unfortunately never heard back. The Downloads page is still up and lists versions 4.0 and 5.0 (beta), but all the links are long dead. I do still have my 3.5 inch floppies with MCAS installed in a drawer somewhere, but I have no idea if they’re any good or not, and (more importantly) I don’t have a system up and running at the moment that has a floppy drive. But wait–not all is lost! I managed to track down all five MCAS 4.0 disk installer executables, the service pack to update to 4.1, and the executable to upgrade from 4.0/4.1 to 5.0 through some judicious use of the wayback machine.

Running it…

I managed to get MCAS running on a Win98 virtual machine around this time last year. I don’t remember all the nitty gritty details, so I’m going to run through the whole setup again and do a better job of documenting it and post a Part 2. I’d also love to get THOR running again, but I need to thoroughly check out the hardware before firing it up–don’t wanna blow a cap–and post a Part 3.

Here’s a teaser of installing 4.0 in the VM. More to come.

MCAS Installing