UPLOAD

Music Control

System

Set up a cheap wireless server for your song collection. By Andy Seubert

It was easy enough to rip my music CDs onto my hard drive. The problem was how to access all those songs conveniently from wherever I happened to be in my house. The answer is to use an old computer as my music server, configure it as a web server, and access it via a wi-fi connection from my laptop.

THE HARDWARE

To make things simple, I’ll assume you can scrounge a bare-bones PC that you’ll use only as your music server. You don’t need much computing power to play music and serve a web page; I used a very old Packard Bell. It must run Windows XP with all the updates, and must have an Ethernet jack.

I’ll also assume you have a wireless-enabled laptop, and a wireless router with at least one empty port. Plug your server into that port using a standard Ethernet cable. Now plug the output from the sound card on your server to any unused input on your regular stereo receiver, probably using an audio cable with RCA jacks on one end and a mini-jack plug on the other. RadioShack sells these cables.

Copy your music collection onto the hard drive of your server, and we’re ready for the setup.

1. CHECK YOUR SYSTEM

To let your laptop find the server, the server needs a static IP address. We have to pick one that won’t cause a conflict with other devices sharing the router.

On your server, click Start ⇒ Settings ⇒ Control Panel, double-click Network Connections, double-click Local Area Connection, click the Support tab, and then the Details button. Write down the numbers for your IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and DNS Server. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what all these numbers mean.)

2. SET UP AN IP ADDRESS Close the top 2 windows to get back to the Network Connections window. Right-click Local

Illustration by PARS/E design

108 Make: Volume 13