Found my first MP3 player

NeghVar

NeghVar

2[H]4U
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May 1, 2003
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Cleaning out numerous boxes of various computer parts and gadgets and I find this. My first MP3 player from about 15 years ago. And it still works.

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I had one of the original Diamond Rio MP3 players with the paltry 32MB of storage but it did accept an SD card so that helped. Even with 32MB of storage that was only like 6-7 typical songs so not much even with the very very old MP3 algorithms of the time that nowadays sound horrible in comparison to newer audio compression formats. It looked like this:

Rio_pmp300.jpg


Years later I had the Rio Karma which to this day I still consider to be the best DAP (Digital Audio Player) ever manufactured. It had a Wolfson DAC in it, a true parametric EQ (not like any competing products ever dared to go that far), a 1.8" hard drive that you could upgrade (killed the warranty but whatever), and it had an amp in it that pushed 75 mW of juice into headphones which was crazy powerful at that time. I really miss having one of those devices, maybe someday I'll encounter one someplace. I look for them on eBay from time to time and when they do appear, even if they're not in great shape, people ask $300+ for 'em. The Rio Karma...

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The Karma had that docking station which would "pulse" the blue light along with the music when playing. Also, the dock had an Ethernet jack in it (also USB support) so it was effectively the first actual "media server" in the sense that you could play the music files off the Karma to any network connected device it was attached to. Way ahead of its time, for sure.

Nowadays I have an LG V20 with the awesome DAC in it, works just fine for me, but someday I really do hope to find a Karma in good working condition just to have one again. I actually wanted one of those Nomad devices, the big blue one they made that looked like a CD player, almost got one but decided on something else long ago but they had a good reputation in spite of the crappy battery life.

EDIT:
Well shit, I just took a chance and looked at eBay, someone has a Karma in good working condition with the dock for like $68 shipped and of course I'm broke 'cause of the holidays, just my luck. :D
 
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I remember when Diamond announced theirs, the RIAA went apeshit over it and sued them. They claimed it was a medium to share MP3's and was another threat to the existence of commercialized music.
 
I had one of those Creative MP3 players also. Worked great.
 
We were too poor. I never had an MP3 player. I did end up getting a deck in my car that would play MP3's burnt on a CD. Navigating through folders was the worst, but it was nice putting 100+ songs on a single CD.
 
Well, it still works, but the battery will not charge. So it is useless. I opened it to find a fujitsu 20GB 2.5" IDE HDD20190104_190834.jpg 20190104_192402.jpg
 
My first MP3 player was an Emachine, with a K6-2 300 + 128MB SDRAM + 10GB Maxtor HDD + W98 + Napster (Morpheus later after Napster folded) + Winamp. :D
 
Tiberian said:
Can more than likely find a replacement battery on eBay or someplace for a few bucks. Unless of course in the process of disassembling it you completely pooched the entire device forever, that is. :D
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I did consider that. Replacement batteries were about $8 - $15 each. But what are the odds of me using it since my smartphone can serve the same purpose plus a better interface, organizational features, and not require wired earbuds.
 
Well I thought the whole reason you created this thread was to say "Look what I found, I wonder if I can get it working again..." and so on and so forth, but apparently that wasn't the idea. There's actually a market for those older audio players in good working condition, a few bucks for a battery to get it functional could translate into a bit more than a few bucks, if you get my meaning. ;)
 
I had a 40gb version of this. Used it for years, then it sat in my desk drawer for a few years, then I sold it on ebay.

My first one though was a no-name china brand portable walkman-type cd-player that also played mp3 files. I bought it in 97 or 98, I still have it somewhere. Being able to put 6 or 7 albums onto one cd-r was pretty bad ass back in the day. But man did it destroy AA batteries. It wouldn't play through an entire cd's worth of MP3s on a fresh set.

These Zen's aren't worthless even if the battery is dead. Load it up to the max with music and leave it plugged into AC, plug into a amp/receiver and let it play on random/repeat forever. Never ending background music.

I do remember the USB interface on the Zen being unbearably slow though. I don't even think it was USB 2.0.
 
The only drivers available from Creative are XP drivers. Before I disassembled it, I tried to access it on Windows 10 and Windows 7. No luck. I suspect I would need to install a VM of Windows XP to conventionally access it. I could reassemble it to be displayed as an artifact for a computer museum.
.
 
I had a Samsung garbage-time MP3 player that held a total of 32MB (zero expansion, parallel port for transfer etc)

I got it for practically nothing cuz I found it open-box in the back of the warehouse at work (CompUSA)

IT SUCKED! I bought an MP3 cd player like a month later....
 
That's cute. How different was your taste in music 15 years ago?

I don't think I ever could afford an mp3 player before they fell out of fashion...
 
I bought one of those giant Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox players right around 2000. It literally looked just like a portable CD player (same shape and everything), but it held like 20x more songs than anything else at the time. I had thousands of songs on that thing. It was great for a few years, but as MP3 tech changed, it didn't seem to like newer files. It wouldn't play about 1/2 the songs I put on it by the mid 00's.
I eventually replaced it with a tiny Zen player that only held about 50 songs but had crazy battery life.
 
I remember buying a Nomad when they first came out... It's crazy to think how much they cost back then compared to now.
 
I had a Diamond Rio 600 (32MB). I remember being so disappointed with it, haha. It could only fit a few songs, and the audio quality was terrible. I think it broke and I just resumed using my Minidisc player.

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This was my first MP3 player, the Creative Zen Vision M:
creative-zen-vision-m-3d-3ds_D.jpg

It was stolen in 2010 during a robbery along with my first smartphone (HTC Evo 4G), my Garmin GPS unit (only GPS unit I ever owned, I just use Google Maps or Waze now), my first Nintendo DS, and a bunch of other shit I don't even recall anymore. Since then I've just used my Android phones for music.

Oh wait no, I forgot! My first MP3 player was actually this:
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I completely forgot all about this thing! It was a real piece of crap. The screen was terrible (both in terms of visual quality and touch response), and using the device felt sluggish. It had a camera but the pics weren't very good quality. I did not buy this thing, it was a gift. Man, I completely forgot this thing even existed. This thread caused the memories to come flooding back.
 
I picked up an original SLIMP3 (pre-Logitech acquisition and the "Squeezebox" name) shortly after they came out:

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Outside of basic star/stop/skip/etc., using the built-in screen to navigate to anything was a pain. Simply not enough rows to display a usable list. At least the web interface to the server software was pretty good.

I still have it stashed away somewhere, it probably still works. Currently using a Squeezebox Touch in its place, though I've been contemplating replacing it with an RPi + DAC HAT running Volumio or similar.
 
I also had an original Diamond Rio as my first.

Then I went to a Dell DJ 20GB,
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Then a Apple iPod Shuffle
 
I had one of these:

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It fit like 20 songs on it. Best thing about it, NOT WORRY ABOUT CDs SKIPPING.

:D
 
Behold the Rio Volt SP90. Still have it - but it never got much use due to the pain of using the display and controls to choose a file for playback.

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This was mine. 20GB Archos Jukebox. I loved it, but required manual organization of all my music.
At the time I didn't mind, the whole digital thing was fun and new.

That original 20GB of music is still somewhere in my current digital collection.

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i had a "discman" that used cd-r to store songs on and play them.

7 minutes of anti skip lol

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this one
 
I am still using my first MP3 player every day at work.

It's a 32GB Microsoft Zune. I use the HD radio feature the most.
 
I was a big fan of Diamond Rio players.

First player was the PMP300 with a whopping 32MB of storage! I was lucky enough to have an additional 32MB SmartMedia card, but even with 64MB total I was encoding my musing at 96kbit/s to get more songs on there. I fucking hate using the parallel port to transfer music to it. Eventually the battery door broke on it, I believe that was a common problem.

Upgraded to a Rio Volt (SP90) and had a good run with that. When standard 74/80 minute CD's weren't enough, I was buying 90/99 minute CD's. Still have this thing in the basement somewhere but not sure if it works or not.

After the Volt I upgraded to a Rio Riot which at the time was already an older model. I loved this thing, having 20GB capacity was amazing. The biggest problem with this was the USB 1.1. interface. I remember queuing up music for transfer in the morning before work, going to work, going to school, then coming home at 9 or 10PM and it STILL not being done.

I have a friend that still actively uses a first gen Zune. :)

A friend of mine in High School had an Eiger Labs MPMan, I believe they beat Diamond to the market by a matter of weeks with the first portable MP3 player.
 
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I remember when Diamond announced theirs, the RIAA went apeshit over it and sued them. I remember when standard 74/80 minute CD's weren't enough, I was buying 90/99 minute CD's too. Ahora incluso en mi celular puedo tener miles de canciones en su memoria extendida.
 
I think I may have had the very first commercial MP3 player in Canada.

I had pre-ordered the Rio PMP300 prior to its launch and the RIAA lawsuit, but of course the shipments got blocked. At some point shipments started in the US, but Canada was still blocked. The day Creative was allowed to ship into Canada, I got them to overnight air FedEx my PMP300 from California to downtown Calgary. It showed up at 10:30am.

Nobody I showed it too had ever heard of an MP3 player and the fact that this little CD less box could play digital music from the internet blew people's minds.

It didn't show up in Canadian retail or computer stores for more than a year after I bought mine. They were scared of being sued for quite a while.

I paid $400 US for it and the additional 16MB SMART Media memory card, for a total of 48MB. Held an average of 11 songs at a decent quality.
 
I had a Rio PMP300 when they first came out, a whole 3 years before the first iPod. Everyone at my high school thought it was the coolest thing. Unfortunately the notorious battery port issues hit me after a little over a year. I took it everywhere with me after carrying around a Sony Discman for so long. It's probably sitting around in a box somewhere.
 
Still got my MK1 Zune and it still works. 6Hours+ playback after 11+ years.
 
Still have my dell juke 30gb. Can barely put musoc on it now. Requires XP and special softwate.
 
My first MP3 player was a Sandisk Sansa 4GB and then an iPod 30GB. I am not sure where the Sansa is but I sold the iPod a couple of months after I got it, can't remember why.

I did get a Zune 30GB and I still have that and it still works,
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Panasonic SV-SD80.
Came with a 32MB SD card that I eventually upgraded to 256MB. Those were the days!
+1 For the Zune HD. Still have it somewhere around here. Anyone else have issue with the Zune software deleting your music on you?
 
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