So, I've had this plan for ages to follow up with what I did with my nslu2, and hide a Debian box inside a working stereo.

Finally I've started work on this little project. I bought a cheap stereo with CD/tape/radio, mostly on the criteria:

• It needed to be big enough to stand a chance of fitting my qnap board and a full size SATA drive in it. But not too big..
• It needed to have line in. Luckily, most stereos do, thanks to ipods.

I got lucky.. after removing the CD drive, ripping out the battery compartment, and making other modifications to the interior of the case, I had just enough space to fit the qnap board, with centimeters to spare in some places, and millimeters in others. It fits perfectly. The board's LEDs and reset button will be accessible via the CD slot.

I was able to keep the radio and amp working. Wiring up a USB sound card to that was easy.

I could have kept the cassette deck working, but since I don't have any more of that media, I stripped it, and am planning to put a USB hub in there, accessible by pressing Stop/Eject. ;-)

It seems I will even have a fair bit of empty space. Pondering adding a small UPS. Or, I might toss in an access point.