post music: mori calliope's PHANTOMIME (the whole album, on CD, playing on the box itself. i'm telling you this is cool)
Okay, so. I watched a YouTube video recently from esteemed weird tech hour-long tech creator Cathode Ray Dude. Specifically, I watched Quick Start Gaiden 3, a video about the MSI MEGA line of small form factor PCs. If you want to watch the hour and change epic, I've linked it about 20 or so words ago but if you don't have that kind of time here is the super duper cliffnotes on it:
It is a conventional Shuttle-style Windows XP-era computer with a mid-tier stereo slapped on the front. Or rather, it's a mid-tier stereo with a Windows XP-era computer sticking out the back.
And it seems that MSI had made multiple different variants of this, as despite MSI's best effort to wipe the MEGA line from history, there are several floating pages around many multiple regional websites with forum posts and even some drivers. From my looking around, there seems to be the MEGA 180, the 651, the 865, the 865 PRO, and there might have been a 400 as well but I'm not certain. I'm also aware of the MEGA mPC 900 series, but from what I can tell those don't have any of the stereo functionality on it (it is just a small PC).
And of course, after watching the video, I had to buy one.
While Gravis' model was the MEGA 180 with AMD Athlon of some variety, the one I picked up was the MEGA 865. My model came with a 2.6GHz Celeron Northwood-- a Celeron based on the Pentium 4 line and it's probably for the best that it's a Celeron here because it doesn't look like there's much in the way of cooling beyond a thick copper block sandwiched between two different-sized fans; a full Pentium 4 might actually catch fire in this box. Though, the manual for my model does boast support for P4 Northwoods up to 3.2 GHz and Prescotts up to 2.8, so maybe it is capable of handling it? It also came in red, which I found amusing for an Intel machine (you'd think the red trim would go to the AMD box, but no).
Also inside is a single DDR400 stick at 512MB; I went and added a second for a total of 1GB. It came with a 40GB Maxtor IDE hard drive. And to top it, my model came with the bespoke MSI MEGA TV tuner card, which apparently is quite rare, so that's a cool find despite not getting the matching remote.
The stereo is powered by an onboard BlueBird chip, which is basically an SoC for this specific purpose. It reuses the IDE optical drive for CD playback and the audio outputs for.... audio output. But that's pretty much it, along with its own specific AM/FM tuner for tuning in to radio stations. While in stereo mode, all of the other ports are dead and useless. Also as it uses the IDE drive for CD playback, that all but completely rules out using the stereo while the PC is on; it is (mostly) one or the other at a time.
While I'm on the stereo, I can start with that. The stereo is perfectly serviceable. It plays CDs very well (because it is a PC optical drive I might be tempted to say that playback is better than a normal CD player) and with a connected antenna in the form of some RCA cable pointed at the sky I can tune in to the only radio station I can pick up anyway. It is just as good at being a stereo as my Sony CDP-397 and post-Chinafication RCA branded audio receiver. The LED-shining-through-funny-shapes front panel is the most "stereo front panel" front panel I've seen in a very long time, with its animated disc on the right side, Strongly Italic 14-segment display digits, and red-to-green gradients. The LEDs are a bit jarring on long uniform lines but otherwise it's.... okay.
The animated disc is pretty much just that, mostly. The animation changes based on what EQ mode there is; of which there is four: "Normal" (or Flat on most other stereos), Pop, Classic, and Jazz. They are pretty standard EQ settings in terms of sound; Pop really pumps the mids, Classic enhances the bass and treble (your standard "V" shape EQ), and Jazz seems to be the same but with a bit stronger bass. Anyway, on Normal, the animated disc just spins a single line around and around, Classic spins a spiral, and Jazz spins multiple lines. Pop seems to have a spectrum analyzer that is actually functional; why this isn't a thing on any of the other EQ options is baffling. Also, the Classic and Jazz animations are buggy; they break in parts and it's annoying when you see it.
And that's pretty much it. It's a stereo. There's very little in the way of options; there's not even a shuffle or program mode for the CD. What you see is what you get.
Except there's a whole PC strapped to it. In regards to the PC, it is also.... perfectly serviceable. Because of its bespoke hardware, you're really only running Windows XP or maybe Windows 2000 on it. It may be possible to run something newer on it, but with its Pentium 4-class chip, I wouldn't try past Windows 7, and also because of its bespoke hardware Linux is pretty much completely off the table (as far as I can tell) unless you don't mind losing the specific functionality. This may be a good candidate for retro XP or earlier gaming if you give it an AGP graphic upgrade if the onboard Intel 865G graphics are not good enough for your games. As I play UT99 and Full Tilt, this was more than serviceable for me, but if I dive into later titles I might give it the graphics buff.
But there's something cool about this PC. MSI has software to interface with the stereo, which while you might not need this to play a CD-- Windows Media Player is plenty good for that, this does allow you to use the radio tuner in Windows. Which is absolutely fantastic and means you lose no functionality while the PC is on. I did run into a glitch where the stereo was hard-locked after using the tuner in PC mode and I had to unplug the unit to recover. But, it was only one time and it may have been a skill issue.
Anyway, this is the coolest stealth XP machine ever. Good luck finding one though; my 865 was the last one on eBay. Sorry not sorry.
oh yeah, the MSI PC Alert software also thought my CPU was at 129 degrees C, wouldn't recommend this software