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Re: Probably OT: MP3 Player revisited

For some bizarre reason, i think son will make it use it'd proprietary 'memory
stick' storage.  Like stick-of-gun shaped flash cards, twice as much, and blue.

Although, I was at Officemax today and saw their PDA display - They have a Casio
E-11 (8mb) on for 299, and I've seen 'em for less on eBay.  They accept CF+
(IIRC), and using something like XAudio, you can play yer' mp3s-  And yes, it
has a stereo headphone out, one of the only PsPCs that do-- and the Upcoming
E-100 and 110 are colour (65 thousand colours), and can play the 'Phantom
Menace' trailers. :)

Space was always my argument against the current crop of MP3S players, though
I'm pretty sure you  could find an E-11 on Ebay for about 200, same price as a
Rio, and use CF cards, or perhaps a MicroDrive -- Gee, It seems I've nothing to
bitch about anymore.

Oh yeah, on a nearly unrelated note, does anyone know if there is a RealAudio
Player for WinCE?  RealVideo would be nice, but RA is what I want.

Timothy Gray wrote:

> 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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> >> Wear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org
> >
> >--
> >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
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> >
>
> --
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