I made a custom made MP3 player a couple of years ago, but it no longer exists, but I would like to make a new one soon.
The first MP3 Player (also known as JNDAPV1.0) was made up of a circa 1996 Trident AT Motherboard with an Intel Pentium 100, a 500MB Hard disk & a 4GB Hard disk, 16MB 66MHZ Ram, a Creative
SoundBlaster 16 PnP ISA card and a 3Com Etherlink III network card. The motherboard sat on the base of the box while the power supply and the hard disks were mounted onto the inside of one of the
sides. The housing was not at all appropriate - too big and made of wood (a wine box), which I had hoped to replace with a type of Hi-Fi deck or VHS player housing.
The 500MB hard disk was meant to hold the software, while the noisy 4GB hard disk held the mp3 files. The system ran Microsoft Windows 98SE, with a directory MP3 player (which I cannot remember the
name of). This was a very poor choice of software - the system took ages to boot, and the directory MP3 player was closed source, and so it could not be customized. The two drives were shared over
SMB, so I could manage the music on the player, and change the software if necessary. When in action, the music/volume was changed with the keyboard, but it was guesswork as there was no screen to
see which track you were on.
One day, when removing a PCI card from the motherboard, the whole socket came off and all the 'pins' for the socket were exposed and bent. After removing them all (it probably was a stupid thing to
do), I turned on the computer and it never worked again - it was time for a new motherboard, except I never did get one.
I have been looking around for a while, and feel this is what the MP3 player should have, if I was to make a new one:
- A metal case - for heat dissipation - the case could be from an old hi-fi deck/VCR etc.
- Run MS-DOS 7.1 ( what Windows 95OSR2/98 uses as it's kernel) or a similar DOS - boots very quickly, reliable, supports FAT32 (so I can install a much larger hard disk),
more customizable than Windows, easy to program and there is some great MP3 player software available for DOS.
- Damp MP3 Player for DOS - supports LCD screens (serial and parallel), supports Gamepads/Joysticks/Parallel Port Inputs, supports playlists and some other music formats, and more
- MS Client 3 with WFW Patch - For file and print sharing over MS Networks
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