[elliot42]

We had a massive cleanup at work yesterday and got rid of a heap of old hardware. I took home this modem as I thought the design of the case was pretty awesome and retro.

I'd like to re-purpose the case and put some sort of audio electronics thing inside there, but I don't know what.
I'd like to maybe play with an Arduino and do some sort of digital or analogue input switcher (looking at linuxworks' projects) some time, maybe with a VU meter (there's an LED array on the front of the modem).
Another future project may include some sort of single board computer media player.

Does anyone have some interesting ideas as to what I could do with this thing?
Not necessarily audio related, I guess. I'd just like to do something interesting with it.

The red panel has an array of 12 red LEDs behind it, there's a momentary switch on the front and a volume slider on the side (visible in the image). On the back there are 2 RJ12 jacks, power input, switch and 25(?) pin RS-232 port.

 

[rshuck]

Preamp with VU Meter. How big is that thing?

 

[elliot42]

The height would be about 1", 5" wide and 8" long (I'm guessing, I'm at work and the modem is at home).

 

[DKJones96]

Arduino was my first thought as far as getting something cool going with the lights on the front. A serial shift register should take care of the lights without requiring much work.

Were you wanting to go for an analog or digital switch? If you are going digital the LEDs up front will only be useful for telling you what input you are on. If analog you should be able to put a VU meter on it.

 

[linuxworks]

how funny. I still have my modem, just like that. it was expensive as hell, too! they offered firmware upgrades (for a fee, sigh) to go from 28.8 to 33 and then to 56. I never upgraded mine to 56 and finally dsl came out so no one cares anymore.

still, its the best modem you can buy, at the time (at least). its probably great for fax or when you need an external modem. I would not ruin it. it was the cadillac of modems in its day.

 

[elliot42]

I did look up the modem and see that they're still supported with a limited lifetime warranty. The one I have isn't that old either, the board was made in '99 but I guess the case design hasn't changed much since it was introduced in '83.

But not do anything with it? That's not very DIY of you

If I don't do anything with it, it's just going to sit in a drawer somewhere and never get used. And it was sitting in a drawer at work for probably 7 years doing nothing.

I'm not really sure about a switch (I want to make something useful that won't be redundant in my main setup). I have source selection in my chipamp for analogue which I pass through to my headphone amp. And my next project (once I get my current ones completely finished) will probably be an Opus DAC which would include some sort of digital input selection.

But source selection or a VU meter does seem like the logical thing to do with the LEDs.

Thanks for the input so far.