minimum specs for dedicated juke?

[bigle]

computers are not my strong point so please bear with me.  i've been in the planning/acquisition stage for a while but am picking up speed again.  i've began looking to acquire a cheap pc to put into a dedicated jukebox.  what i don't know is what's the crappiest system i could use that would still get the job done without any noticable problems.  if you are running a juke with an old machine in it, what are it's specs and what software can it handle?

so far i've been looking at salmon king's and the virtual music jukebox software but am still searching out others to test.  my two main requirements are album mode and touch screen capabilities.  i am open to trying others as well.

also, i've got around 200 or so cds in my collection.  what size hard drive would you recommend?  i plan on ripping at 192 but that's not written in stone.  is there any compatability issue with using a large hard drive with an old machine (i seem to remember reading something about the new hard drives being too large for some computers)?

thanks in advance.

[RacerX]

You can pretty much use any old crappy system to play mp3 files.  But if you want album support and touchscreen, you probably want a system that will run Windows 98SE or better.  I have a couple of 400mHz machines running DOSCab jukebox, and they work great.  They would work for a Windows based solution as well, but I want to be able to just power them off without worrying about Windows having to shut down first.

I picked one of the machines up for $15, and the other was free.  So you shouldn't have any trouble.

As far as hard drives go, the bigger the better because you think you won't fill it up, but you will sooner or later.  You won't have a problem with the size being too big using 98SE.  The FAT32 file system allows hard drives as large as 2 terrabytes.  And I don't think you're going to be using anything bigger than that.   

[billf]

so far i've been looking at salmon king's and the virtual music jukebox software but am still searching out others to test. my two main requirements are album mode and touch screen capabilities. i am open to trying others as well.

Bigle, I saw your post in Buy/Sell/Trade (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,27746.0.html) regarding the 14" touchscreen monitors.

[bigle]

bill

i set the touchscreen up using my roomates computer to make sure it worked (my laptop doesn't have a serial port).

[Chris]

FYI: My DOSCab test machine is a P133 with 32 MB of RAM.  The lowest machine I know it will run on well is a P120.  I believe that under the 100MHz mark, you start to be limited in the bit rate of MP3's you can use.

--Chris

[bigle]

chris - thanks for the input.  i seem to remember reading that at some point you;d be adding an album mode to your software.  is there a timetable for that? 


bill - here are a couple pictures of the touchscreen running the desktop.  i'm a horrible photographer so they kinda blurry but the screen is sharp and bright in real life.  i've got it running at 800x600 and 60 Hz.  My roomate is having some trouble w/ his computer at this point so i didn't want to install any software (ie the sk juke) but figured this might give you an idea of size.  hope this helps

[Chris]

chris - thanks for the input.

[RacerX]

thanks for the info.  i think i've got a line on a 450mHz machine on the cheap so hopefully that will work.  How many megs of ram are you using?

later

Each machine has 128 MB of PC100 RAM in it.  But it wouldn't even take that much.

[billf]

bill - here are a couple pictures of the touchscreen running the desktop.

[garyh]

My current jukebox is a 266MHz with 64Mb RAM and Win98SE on a 12Gb HDD. It  was/is an NCR 7401 web kiosk with an LCD touch screen that I got from eBay. The whole thing is one unit (expect the PSU) and it also has the big advantage of not needing a cooling fan.

I really wanted to use WinCab but it just won't work with the touchscreen so I'm currently using TouchTone http://www.mp3touchscreens.com/ that is a front end to WinAmp. I can recommend this software but I would prefer the retro look/feel of WinCab if it worked with my screen.

Before this I ran DOSCab on a 200Mz/64Mb DOS PC.  I use OGG Vorbis rather than MP3 as the quality/size ratio is better.

Regards

Gary