e011035.PDF

ELECTRONICS ON-LINE

Stand-Alone MP3 Players

a new lease of life for the old PC

By H. Baggen

MP3 players are now in the shops in assorted colours and varieties, with

different price tags, from small Walkman-like players using solid-state

memories to full-blown CD players for use in the living room.

Cramming a CD-R with MP3 files is

an excellent way of ensuring many

hours of listening pleasure. But the

real joy is, of course, found in playing

home-burned CDs on a home-made

MP3 CD player.

MP3 music files are compressed in

such a way that they are easily

transferred via a relatively slow

medium like the Internet. Not sur-

prisingly, MP3 gained its popularity

entirely from the Internet. Thanks to

the excellent sound quality offered

by MP3 files, this particular file for-

mat has also become popular on

equipment other than the PC. The

arrival of portable stand-alone MP3

players gave the format a consider-

able boost. However, because the

memory cards used in these players

are relatively expensive and limited

in respect of storage capacity, a new

phenomenon has emerged: the MP3

CD. A home-burned CD-R of less

than a pound each has enough

capacity for 10 hours worth of MP3

files. Although off-the-shelf players

(both portable and more residential

ones) are now available for these

CDs, it is, of course, more fun to

build one yourself. Surprisingly, that

is easily achieved with some old

computer parts.

So what’s needed to build my

own player for MP3 CDs? The

answer is: an old motherboard with

at least a Pentium 100 or 133, a com-

puter power supply, a CD-ROM

drive, a sound card and (optionally)

an old hard disk. On the Internet we

came across several websites

describing the construction of a

stand-alone MP3 player from not

much more than the

above components.

The first example

to be mentioned here

is mpMan from Mirko

Roller. Mirko built an

MP3 CD player based

on an old Pentium-100

motherboard. He

employs a 2-line LCD

as a display. At the

time of writing (mid-

November 2000)

Mirko was busy

developing a boot

image for the CD,

which allows a

bootable MP3 CD to

be burned that’s

capable of starting

the system at power-

on. A floppy disk or

hard disk drive is then

superﬂuous. The source code for this

project is available from Mirko’s

website.

The aim of the Spanish project

dubbed MP3Case Car Stereo Player

is to bring MP3 music into your car.

The project was started in 1998 and

employs a souped up Pentium-133.

The system is built in a separate

case, and WinAmp is used as the

MP3 program. Even a remote control

is catered for. Although fairly exten-

sive construction notes and a parts

list are available, not everything is to

be had in English. If you are really

interested in this design, we reckon

there’s no way to avoid brushing up

your Spanish or seek the help of a

translator.

Though Andie’s MP3 CD Player

Project is also based on ‘scrap’ PC compo-

nents, he manages to cram it all into a case of

the size of regular CD player with a height of

just 7 cm. The case then contains a CD-ROM

drive as well as a 20-GB hard disk drive

which easily holds up to 340 hours worth of

music. A nice detail of this design is that it

incorporates a webserver, allowing the user

to compile and edit playlists using a web

browser.

(015005-1)

mpMan - Build your own MP3 player:

http://www.dvz.fh-koeln.de/~bn520/mp3.html

MP3Case Car Stereo Player:

http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/mpcase/

english.htm

Andie’s MP3-CD-Player Project:

http://homepages.compuserve.de/asdevel/

mp3-cd-player.htm

1/2001

Elektor Electronics

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