Okay, so who here has a dedicated server?  Hmm, a fair few of you in this Broadband age.  Now, how many of you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse permanently attached?  I didn't think so.  The traditional solution is to use a KVM switch, but how many of you fancy shelling out £99 or more on one?  Especially when all you want to do is mess around with your SHOUTcast playlist?

As some of you will already know, Citadel is my general purpose server. It's the Primary Domain Controller for BSI, it's my e-mail server, file server, streaming video server...  And of course, it's my SHOUTcast server.  For those of you who haven't tried it before, SHOUTcast is a brilliant add-in for WinAmp that allows you to stream MP3 audio over a network.  Although designed for streaming across the Internet, it works fine across any network that can handle IP traffic.  So, I've got my own personal radio station playing my favourites 24/7 to my desktop and my laptop.  But what if I want to listen to a particular song?  Or if I'm in the wrong mood for a particular song at a particular time?  Or just want to know what is playing at the moment without having to connect?  Well, I *could* control the server with PCAnywhere or WinVNC, but it's a bit of a hassle having to run the programme, connect, maximise WinAmp, do whatever it is I need to do, minimise WinAmp, disconnect, close the programme and go back to whatever it is I was doing before all that.  Another option is to disconnect the keyboard, mouse and monitor from my desktop and plug it into Citadel - an even more laborious task, and one that could cause problems as you're not supposed to hotplug PS/2 devices.  Finally, I could buy a KVM, but as mentioned £99 is a bit steep for something I'm going to use once in a blue moon.

So, up steps the mod.  I promised that PalmAmp would form the basis of a major mod, and here it is.  The first step was to find an old palmtop that didn't cost the earth.  A quick visit to eBay later, and I'm the proud owner of a 3Com Palm Pilot with PRO upgrade.  Still in fairly good condition, batteries not included.  I was also £20 lighter, but that's cheaper than buying a serial LCD (more on this later).

For those of you who haven't seen a palmtop this old, it is very similar to modern Palm machines. It has a 160x160-pixel touch sensitive LCD screen, no backlight (sadly), 1MB RAM, a few hardware buttons, and it runs on two AAA batteries.  The eBay bundle also came with an old HotSync cradle that the guy had modded into a travel cable by taking the hardware out, covering the PCB in silicon sealant (the stuff you use in bathrooms) to protect it a bit, and hoping it still worked.  It's ugly, but it saved me the job of wiring up my own serial interface cable so who am I to complain?  First things first, I had to install the software. That's a nice quick job, and five minutes later PalmAmp was installed and interfacing with WinAmp on my main computer just fine.  Now the modding can begin in earnest!

First thing was to take the palmtop to bits, always a fun task.  The plastic cases on these old palmtops are easy to break, so I had to be a bit careful how I did it.  In the end I didn't have any trouble, and it came to bits easily.  The speaker in these things is a flat circle of metal that is glued to the case back and wired to the PCB.  I didn't want a speaker, so a quick tug on the thin wires later and it's a mute palmtop.  The front of the case came off, and it turns out that the screen half is connected to the main system board via a thin ribbon cable that has just enough play in it to allow the palmtop to be unfolded into a unit half as thick but twice as wide.  Perfect for mounting in the top of mATX systems, but I digress.  That's for a later mod...

The standard power is from two AAA batteries, as I mentioned earlier.  Now, at 1.5v a chuck, that gives a total of 3v (my maths teacher would have been so proud!).  As I'd been using it a bit, my multimeter gave me a reading of 2.74v when I checked.  However, on the system board is a small rechargeable power cell that is used in the event of battery removal to keep the RAM ticking over until you put fresh batteries in.  A check on *that*, and I got a reading of 3.4v, which quickly drops down to nothing when you take the batteries out.  This gave me a pretty good idea of the voltages the palmtop hardware could take without melting.  This palmtop was always going to have to be powered by the servers PSU, as even without a backlight the palmtop will only last about 48hrs continuous usage, and less when you're using the serial port.  I couldn't just wire it up to a spare molex, as they give a minimum 5v, which is *much* too high.  The ATX connector that gives power to the motherboard, however, has a lovely range of voltages all the way down to 3.3v.  Because I knew the hardware could take 3.4v without a problem I didn't need to mess around with voltage regulators or resistors, and I simply connected a black wire to Pin 13 (0v Ground) and a red wire to Pin 11 (+3.3v).  Remove the batteries, connect the two wires to the battery connectors on the palmtop, quickly turn the server on to see what happens, and my hunch pays off.  The palmtop works like a charm.  Turn the server off before it can boot, and put the batteries back in so the memory doesn't clear.

All that's left is to mount the thing.  I'd already cut a hole in the server case that was just big enough to see the screen, but not to see the Graffiti area or the non displaying borders.  A quick tidy with a needle file and some C-strip trim and it was looking rather nice.  But how the heck do I get the palmtop to stay where I want it?  I couldn't screw it in, as there was nowhere to put a screw on the palmtop that wouldn't damage it.  I didn't want to glue it in, as I might want to remove it at some point.  I toyed with the idea of two bolts and a length of metal that would crush the palmtop to the case, but dismissed it as being over complicated.  I was saved, strangely enough, by an arts and crafts shop.  They were selling this Velcro that was self adhesive.  I cut some thin strips, placed them on the edges of the palmtop and in matching positions on the case.  Push the palmtop to the case, the velcro catches, and it stays *exactly* where I put it.  If I ever need to remove it, I simply pull hard enough and it'll come up easily.  This sticky-back Velcro should be in *every* modders toolkit!

I plugged the serial cable into the serial port (well, where else would I put it?) and looped it through a hole in the I/O shield back inside the case.  A few minutes tidying it with some cable ties (the cable was a good deal longer than I needed), and I plugged it into the base of the palmtop.  It was here when I discovered a slight flaw.  Although I'd measured the clearance needed to get the body of the palmtop in without hitting the top of the fan, I hadn't included the size of the serial cable PCB in my calculations.  Result? It didn't fit.  It took a good deal of squeezing to persuade it to go in there, and it was only because the Velcro was so strong that it actually stayed where I put it.  It's not recommended, as I'm putting enormous strain on the wires in the cable and I'm amazed that it actually works to be frank.  Let this be a lesson - *always* plan ahead.

So, everything is in place.  Remove the batteries, check my wiring, put the side back and fire up the server.  The palmtop came on fine, and reported the batteries as full (as it measures the voltages from a maximum of 3v, and 3.3v should have it thinking that they were *very* good batteries!).  Once I'd logged on to NT and loaded WinAmp and PalmAmp, it was crunch time.  Would it work?

Of course it would!  Citadel has now gone liquid crystal!  Full song stats, graphic equaliser control (not that useful as Citadel doesn't have a soundcard) and total control over WinAmp.  This mod isn't just for looks - I can start the stream, stop the stream, skip songs, even browse the full playlist and pick a particular song.  Oh, and I can view the full ID3 song info, too!  All in all, a *very* successful mod. Here's a good picture of the mod as a whole, and click on the image to see a high resolution version.

Quite a few people wondered why I would go to all this trouble when I could just by a Matrix Orbital (or similar) serial LCD that would do WinAmp stats, system stats, nice graphical visualisation and so on.  Well, the main reason was cost.  A 4x20 backlit LCD will set you back around £50 or more.  I didn't really want to shell out that kind of capital.

But that wasn't the only reason.  An LCD is great if you just want to view information. For that, they're the best thing since monitors were invented.  However, that's useless to me.  I needed not just to be able to *see* what WinAmp was doing, but to be able to *change* what WinAmp was doing.  An LCD can't do this.  This mod can.  Because the Palm has a touch sensitive screen, I can just tap the 'Stop' icon with the tip of my finger and WinAmp will stop.  Tap the 'Play' icon and WinAmp starts playing again.  That's what I was aiming for here.

I'm sure all you Linux users are probably feeling a little left out right now.  But don't fret - a plugin is available that makes PalmAmp work with XMMS, so your Linux-based MP3 server can benefit from a touch-sensitive control panel just as much as my Windows NT box did. :D