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Re: Probably OT: MP3 Player revisited

Actually if the RIO was made to use CF cards it would probably be the
hottest selling item around..  very little download time, CF card interfaces
for desktop computers are dirt cheap, etc...  but they decided to use the
dumbmedia cards that have tiny storage,are twice the price of CF cards, and
nearly impossible to buy locally..  (My local staples carries up to 120meg
CF cards now.) I'm waiting for the sony mp3 player.. it will use CF
cards.....  Now to add a CF card interface to my empeg car player...

-----Original Message-----
From: R. Paul McCarty <>
To: Legacy Xunker <>
Cc:  <>
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 9:44 AM
Subject: Re: Probably OT: MP3 Player revisited

>I think this is complete unrealistic.  You have a complete wearable
>pentium class computer here (minus the HMD).  It would be expensive
>(easilly over $1k), it would be big (a pc/104 board with pcmcia is
>already the size of a walkman before you add batteries), and it would be
>power hungry.  I've seen press releases from (trying to track down) a
>couple of vendors who are building devices the size of the rio
>incorporating IBM's microdrives (~100-300MB drives) into these cigarette
>pack sized devices with battery lifes around 8-12 hours for 1AA
>battery.  And for less then $500.  Of course transfers are still slow
>over a parallel port connection, but if you can cram several albums on
>these it may not be such a bother.
>
>BTW, I have the Diamond RIO and I use it every day.  Usually transfer
>bunch of songs once a week and listen to them in chaotic order.
>
>Cheers.
>-Paul
>
>Legacy Xunker wrote:
>>
>> I know this has probably been discussed ad nausea already, but I'd like
>> to revisit it a little bit.
>>
>> The problem will current portable MP3 players are storage.  1 hour of
>> music at 112kps doesn't cut it for me.  That's why the idea of a build
>> yourself MP3 box seems so seductive.
>>
>> So here is my basic idea:  We need something with enough horsepower (at
>> least a p60 speed should do), sound (16 bit, nothing special, maybe
>> SRS), large storage and decent battery life (at least 4 hours).
>>
>> The engine I would envision is something really close to the Cell
>> Computing dx-100 card which is faster than a p75 at decent power usage.
>> I don't know if it has sound built in, but I hope so.  A pc/104 sled
>> wouldn't really be necessary, as for the minimal IO that need to be done
>> you could make one substantially smaller- We'd need power in, sound out,
>> Serial IDE and (preferably) an interface for PCMCIA.  Video wouldn't be
>> needed, as you really wouldn't use a HMD for this; a serial display
>> module would do.  The other serial port would be for sound and
>> navigation, something like the remotes for portable Minidisk players.
>> Power would be one of the largest things size wise, but I NiMH battery
>> like I have for my PowerBook, 45wh at 5 inches by 2.5 inches by .75
>> inches, and would give four hours and change, depending on
>> configuration.
>>
>> Configuration, you cry?  Yes-- this is where the PCMCIA slots come in.
>> One slot would be a Flash card, about 10-20 meg would be great, to hold
>> the OS (linux custom) and playlists.  The other would be for the user.
>> Instead of a fixed IDE hard drive (although it would be nice), but
>> modular storage via PC Card peripherals.  These would include Flash and
>> SRam Cards, CD-ROM drives, SuperDisk and Zip drives and even SCSI
>> devices.  Using some code that would automagically detect these and play
>> from them, you could choose your media verses paying 60 bucks for a 32
>> meg SmartMedia Card.  Most of the drive are small enough (like the
>> PCMCIA zip drives) to be strung on a belt or bandolier (sp).  Vibration
>> and shock would be a problem, but to help this, each MP3 could be copied
>> to the boot device, which is solid state, and spin down any rotational
>> media you use until the next file.  Seek times would suffer on intro
>> play mode, but if the method is just "look through play list (on boot
>> device) on LCD, load song, spin down drive"  it wouldn't be too bad, and
>> save battery power.  And for pure linear play, depending on boot device
>> size, you could copy 2 or three songs to Flash ram and keep them in
>> queue.  And going even further, you could have an accelerometer rigged
>> up to detect them there was no movement or vibration and load files
>> then.
>>
>> Comments?  I know this is really OT, but it uses the same hardware as
>> wearables so...
>>
>> --
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>
>--
>R. Paul McCarty / DARS Coordinator /  / x52059
>317 Lattimore Hall, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627
>Computers don't make errors; what they do, they do on purpose.-Dale/KOTH
>
>--
>Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of
>"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" to 
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>

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