This was a nostalgia bomb for me, particularly because I did a project like this in my first car around the same time. In retrospect, it's a miracle my car never exploded, with questionable wiring running from my console to the trunk, and a power inverter / extension cord combo that was also fairly dubious. But the idea of having all my music was too much to pass up for a nascent driver and techie.

My setup was a mini tower encased in translucent green, bungee corded to my trunk's side panels, and a 10-key with a PS2 extender running to my console. I booted straight in to WinAmp and ran plugins to let me pick songs by entering +$NUM+ or variations of that. A few months in, I got a 4x40 LCD so I could see what was playing and so some menu-type things. The most clever move, I thought, was getting a hot swap HDD tray so I could periodically reload the files, and maybe the true crowning achievement was the printout I had up front of what was available. Simpler but much more fun times, because the challenge was the fun part.