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The MP3mobile (1998)

utter.chaos.org.uk

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Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#21

Post by pjscott »

lmarcos wrote: post #19

I'm the only one still listening mp3s? I have a sandisk mp3 player (size similar to the classic ipod shuffle) and I use yandex to get the mp3s. And I transferred all my old CDs to mp3 format as well. I don't use my smartphone to listen to music because it's too big/heavy (running with it is so uncomfortable).

You're not alone. I have a cheapo mp3 player from a Chinese no-name brand -- I'm pretty sure I've seen the exact same thing sold under multiple brands, for some reason -- and it's tiny, light, and good at playing music. Way better experience than having a smartphone clunking around in my pocket.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#22

Post by dfxm12 »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #16
dfxm12 wrote: post #10

The UI for these things isn't good to use while driving. Music players with big storage have pretty poor ways to find what you're looking for even with a decent sized screen + keyboard (like youtube music on your phone or an ipod touch), let alone just a few buttons (like I had on my MP3 CD player or what this seems to have). Even if you have a passenger running the device, you fall victim to them not knowing your mu…

> not very practical compared to alternatives Compared to alternatives today but in 1998 there wasn't much experience in this space. So it was very much worth experimenting at the time.

No, compared to the alternatives back then as well, like a cd, a tape, the radio, etc. These things have simple controls that you don't need to take your eyes off the road to operate, if you needed to.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#23

Post by stuart78 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #11
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Circa 2001 or so, I got a portable CD player for Christmas that could also play MP3s, which was just about the coolest thing ever at the time. Now instead of the normal 12-13 songs a CD could hold when converted to WAV, I could hold 100-200 songs in mp3 form on a 700mb CD burned as a data disc rather than an audio disc. This was then supplemented in the car with a cassette tape adapter that included an audio jack. [0…

My first car was too new to have a tape player, but too old to have aux/usb/bluetooth input. I had to resort plugging in my creative nomad mp3 player to an FM radio transmitter plugged into my cigarette lighter port. :)

I used a series of those for iPod for the first few years, but lived in Los Angeles, so there was a ton of interference, both from radio stations and other devices broadcasting on the same frequency. It created some pretty chaotic drives from time to time...

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#24

Post by mips_r4300i »

gorkish wrote: post #12

Love and remember this project -- as someone who has also been jamming customized PC computers into cars since the mid 90's, I really believe that there is still a lot of unrecognized potential in having the ability to carry your own personal data and applications with you. I used to have the top viewed install on the MP3Car forums back in the early 2000's when that site was kind of the central hub for these projects…

Another one here for the mp3car forums. Saw a build inside a VW beetle with the LCD bezel bondo'd into the center console and it looked pro.

I picked up a 8" Lilliput LCD, a mini-itx board and a picopsu, and jammed it behind the stereo area. Made the LCD bezel out of the plastic sidewall of a floppy organizer case, but spray painted textured black.

In VB6 you could use the windows media player ActiveX control to introspect your media library. So I could scroll through all my songs on the touch screen with my custom app. And running XP with NTfs meant you could shut off the power at any time with disk corruption.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#25

Post by hondo77 »

lmarcos wrote: post #19

I'm the only one still listening mp3s? I have a sandisk mp3 player (size similar to the classic ipod shuffle) and I use yandex to get the mp3s. And I transferred all my old CDs to mp3 format as well. I don't use my smartphone to listen to music because it's too big/heavy (running with it is so uncomfortable).

As I type this I'm listening to mp3's playing from my iPod classic, line out from the dock, into desktop speakers in my home office. Love it.

I started buying CDs in 1985 (and vinyl before that). I guarantee you I have music that isn't on any streaming service so they're mostly of no use to me.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#26

Post by mrbuttons454 »

gorkish wrote: post #12

Love and remember this project -- as someone who has also been jamming customized PC computers into cars since the mid 90's, I really believe that there is still a lot of unrecognized potential in having the ability to carry your own personal data and applications with you. I used to have the top viewed install on the MP3Car forums back in the early 2000's when that site was kind of the central hub for these projects…

That's an interesting idea, and I'd love to see more about your current setup if you have it posted anywhere. I've also thought about having something like that. I have a Model 3 with a web browser and the ability to connect to wifi. I thought about having a small PC of some sort with cellular connectivity for the same reason, my car is almost always where I am.

I do wonder about the power draw though. Even though I'm driving a car with a huge battery, leaving things like sentry mode on while parked does hit my range in a noticeable way, roughly 3-5% in a typical day. I considered a battery for just the PC, essentially a mini UPS made of 18650s or some such, but haven't gotten much further than just letting the idea percolate.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#27

Post by mrbuttons454 »

I remember this project! Inspired me to make an MP3 player out of an old VCR case and an old 486, to use with my appropriately 90s stereo component stack. Around the same time I had been given 6x Powermac 7200s that had been retired from a local company. I loaded up Debian, and wrote some crude bash scripts to convert WAV to MP3 on the "cluster". I believe they were G3 233mhz, and as a cluster they could rip a CD to MP3 faster than anything on the market at the time. Getting Linux running on a PowerPC CPU got me into Debian, and now 20+ years later it's still my distro of choice, albeit on AWS and Linode these days. :)

Thanks for posting, living in that nostalgia for a moment has made my day.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#28

Post by sumtechguy »

lmarcos wrote: post #19

I'm the only one still listening mp3s? I have a sandisk mp3 player (size similar to the classic ipod shuffle) and I use yandex to get the mp3s. And I transferred all my old CDs to mp3 format as well. I don't use my smartphone to listen to music because it's too big/heavy (running with it is so uncomfortable).

all of my cds nicely ripped to mp3 and on a usb drive right into my car. use them every day. luckily the infotainment system handles them.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#29

Post by kedean »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Circa 2001 or so, I got a portable CD player for Christmas that could also play MP3s, which was just about the coolest thing ever at the time. Now instead of the normal 12-13 songs a CD could hold when converted to WAV, I could hold 100-200 songs in mp3 form on a 700mb CD burned as a data disc rather than an audio disc. This was then supplemented in the car with a cassette tape adapter that included an audio jack. [0…

Semi-related, it's wild how much FM transmitters have improved since the early aughts. I drive a vehicle from 2005 without a tape deck or aux jack, so I picked up a cheap one that receives a bluetooth signal (from my phone), then bridges that to the radio over an FM frequency. The audio quality is truly impressive compared to the iTrip's and such of 20 years ago.

Re: The MP3mobile (1998)

#30

Post by interestica »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Circa 2001 or so, I got a portable CD player for Christmas that could also play MP3s, which was just about the coolest thing ever at the time. Now instead of the normal 12-13 songs a CD could hold when converted to WAV, I could hold 100-200 songs in mp3 form on a 700mb CD burned as a data disc rather than an audio disc. This was then supplemented in the car with a cassette tape adapter that included an audio jack. [0…

Around the same time I got a portable CD player that could play CDs, MP3s, and VCDs. Video CDs were pretty rare in North America but it wasn't much of a feat to author them yourself. You'd typically need two discs to hold a full length movie (MPEG1), but it was kind of a perfect size for television episodes (especially when utilizing RW discs).

And playing them on a CRT tv (still the norm) was a huge improvement over broadcast quality. I think that led to a further interest in DVD-authoring and then Web/Media development.

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