Okay, here's the goal:
I want a device that will boot up, search the CD-ROM and attached USB drives for MP3 files, and play them. The device needs to respond to the following commands:
*Next
*Previous
*Volume up
*Volume down

And that's it. Also, it ought to boot up as fast as possible.

So, here's what I've done so far:

1. Buy case
2. Find target hardware (Pentium 133, 32 MB of ram. Small hard drive.
3. Download and install MoviX, which is a linux live-cd which can be installed to the hard drive to make a standalone media player.
4. MoviX won't load on the target machine. Start over.
5. Download and install Damn Small Linux. This is an itty bitty little linux distribution that should install on anything
6. Damn Small Linux won't boot on the target machine. Start over.
7. Try both on some other hardware
8. Won't work on any of those either. Start over
9. Boot target machine off of old salvaged hard drive
10. Linux boots. Fast! Hey. I wonder what the root password is on this...
11. Reboot in single-user mode and reset the password.
12. Linux boots! Fast! Yay!
13. It's redhat 5.2. Ask some friends how to get sound working in redhat 5.2
14. They tell me, rather snarkily, to buy a whole new computer costing several hundred dollars to perform the exact same task that a my $25 mp3 player does.
15. Hey. This computer doesn't have a network card. I don't actually need one, but without it, it's going to be a bitch to download the relevant software.
16. Did I mention this computer couldn't boot from the CD-ROM?
17. Decide to have a go at slackware. Hey, there's no isos. I have to download all these files manually?
18. Oh. This mirror has isos. Let me download that
19. Four CDs. Okay. Fine.
20. Estimated time Left: 3 hrs. 46 minutes.

So, I'm not going to get this done today. Sigh.