Custom Amiga cases have become a common occurence over the last few years. In most cases their owners attempt to shoehorn the Amiga motherboard into a PC case or build wooden boxes to house their machine. However, Paul Qureshi had a different purpose for his Amiga. Rather than creating a desktop system he wanted to use the Amiga as a portable music player.

I wanted something small for my small car (a Suzuki Alto), that booted up fast (10 seconds max) and didn't need shutting down. In fact, I just wanted to turn the ignition off, and have everything taken care of. Even better, the next time I started my car up, I wanted the music to continue exactly where it left off, just like my CD changer did. But most importantly of all, I wanted it to be Amiga, my system of choice.

Thus, AmiMPC was born.

Based upon these requirements the choice of an Amiga becomes clear. In contrast to Linux and Windows, the AmigaOS has a faster bootup and does not require a shutdown command. Based upon an accelerated 030 A1200, the machine plays MP3 using an MAS3507D DSP connected to the parallel port, Dirk Conrad's MAS Player Pro, MHI drivers, some custom software and a RS232 text terminal as the head unit. The result is a custom designed in-car entertainment system that remembers the previously played track and can be attached to any IDE equipped Amiga for downloading additional tunes.

Paul provides the following details on his in-car MP3 player:

More information on AmiMPC can be found on the project homepage.

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