I picked up a replacement Samsung Powerbook LCD screen on eBay for AU$61.
Fitting it was a simple matter of swapping out the old one. I left the existing cables in place, plugged them into the new screen and reassembled the screen surround.
Everything is now working fine (except the battery wont hold a charge, but I probably wont be using it, so that’s not a problem).
This is the initial design for the MP3 player. I think I’ll mount the LCD screen in the top of the player facing up. Normal operation of the unit will be while standing looking down on the screen. The powerbooks screen has a fairly narrow viewing angle, but it should still be OK in this situation. I’m going to use the Beocenter 4600’s main radio slider for navigation through the song titles.
The slider has a couple of wheels for fine tuning the radio stations, I think I’ll replace these with buttons for track and menu selection. Transport controls (play, stop, fast-forward, and rewind) could be handled with buttons or a second slider – I’m undecided.
I’d like to include a slot loading CD player for playing CD’s and ripping them to the hard drive. I have two slot loading players lying around,
a slim-line 24xCD taken from an iMac,
and a Pioneer DR-706S they were throwing away at work.
The Pioneer is a desktop SCSI model. The Wallstreet powerbook has a SCSI connector so it is compatible but as this is a desktop drive it needs a 12V supply, I’m not sure if I can get 12V form the powerbook. The iMac drive is similar to those used in laptops so it only needs 5V; it may also be easier to fit because of its slim size. But this decision will probably depend on what I decide to do about the hard drive. If I choose to attach a desktop HD to the powerbook then I’ll need a 12V supply anyway. The first thing to do would be to try and get a desktop HD working with the Powerbook – that will probably be my next post.