sfealy
asked on
MP3 Player for 486/66
Any one know of a MP3 Player that will
run comfortably on a 486/66 16MB Ram
with Win95. I have tried Music Match
and PCDJ but neither work successfully
the soumd is broken up and crackley.
Thanks
Steve
run comfortably on a 486/66 16MB Ram
with Win95. I have tried Music Match
and PCDJ but neither work successfully
the soumd is broken up and crackley.
Thanks
Steve
none
I had WinAmp running on a 486/66 pretty good, but that machine had 64 megs of RAM. WinAmp is a good program, and they are always willing to help with problems.
It is going to be tough, not because of the processor, but the amount of memory you have in the machine. If you had 32 megs of memory or more, you may find that the MP3's run a little better. I would also clean up the hard drive, and see what happens. If you are also running out of disk space, then the MP3's may not have room to run.
It is going to be tough, not because of the processor, but the amount of memory you have in the machine. If you had 32 megs of memory or more, you may find that the MP3's run a little better. I would also clean up the hard drive, and see what happens. If you are also running out of disk space, then the MP3's may not have room to run.
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First of all finik, it is not proper ettiquite to answer a question. sfealy should invite you to answer, unless you can supply an answer that is the only answer.
As for your comment:
>the amount of memory or disk space doesn't count at all
Yes, it does. MP3's are compressed audio files that need proper memory to uncompress. The more memory and disk space you have, the more 'breathing room' the file has to uncompress. Think of it as trying to take your coat off in a room 2' by 2'. You will bump your elbows on the wall a few times.
Like I said, I was able to run it on a 486/66, and I might add that it was FULL STEREO, not mono.
There is one more factor in here that I forgot to mention last time, and that is the sound card you are using. What sound card is it, and are there any updated drivers that you can get for it. Some older sound cards need the new drivers, so they can decode MP3's correctly.
Let me know.
As for your comment:
>the amount of memory or disk space doesn't count at all
Yes, it does. MP3's are compressed audio files that need proper memory to uncompress. The more memory and disk space you have, the more 'breathing room' the file has to uncompress. Think of it as trying to take your coat off in a room 2' by 2'. You will bump your elbows on the wall a few times.
Like I said, I was able to run it on a 486/66, and I might add that it was FULL STEREO, not mono.
There is one more factor in here that I forgot to mention last time, and that is the sound card you are using. What sound card is it, and are there any updated drivers that you can get for it. Some older sound cards need the new drivers, so they can decode MP3's correctly.
Let me know.
In my opinion is was(and is, until you prove me I'm wrong) the only answer for the question, since I know no way of running FULL STEREO MP3 on 486DX2.
Now the bottle-neck for 486 is the decoding proccess and not the memory or the sound drivers. MP3 is about 3-4 Megs average, right?
Or maybe you want to tell me, you brebuffered
all the 3 mega, and pre-decoded it in memory, and only then started listening? Then I can beleave the "full stereo on 486" claim, but that's not practical. We were talking about
usual work, which is prebuffering a few hundred K each time, and decoding it, using a few 1-2 megs in memory. I don't see how the sound drivers apply in this case since they should be faster enough in anycase to support real-time sound stream, if winamp couldn't supply one, the problem is there and not in the drivers.
This is my point of view, and right now I'm pretty sure I'm right, but you've said you got
44khz stereo smooth stream on DX2? I'm very interested how you did it, and have no reason not to beleave you. Neither I nor my friends
with same computers succeded in doing it, so please share your secret with us, although it is not relevant right now (we threw the 486's a year ago, partly because of MP3 :)), we still
are computer freaks, and have the desire to learn new/old tricks.
sfealy: This duscussion is not about any of us getting points, it's purely educational, I refuse
to get points for this question (what can you do with these quality points anyway?), so please reject my answer if any of it is untrue.
FINiK out.
Now the bottle-neck for 486 is the decoding proccess and not the memory or the sound drivers. MP3 is about 3-4 Megs average, right?
Or maybe you want to tell me, you brebuffered
all the 3 mega, and pre-decoded it in memory, and only then started listening? Then I can beleave the "full stereo on 486" claim, but that's not practical. We were talking about
usual work, which is prebuffering a few hundred K each time, and decoding it, using a few 1-2 megs in memory. I don't see how the sound drivers apply in this case since they should be faster enough in anycase to support real-time sound stream, if winamp couldn't supply one, the problem is there and not in the drivers.
This is my point of view, and right now I'm pretty sure I'm right, but you've said you got
44khz stereo smooth stream on DX2? I'm very interested how you did it, and have no reason not to beleave you. Neither I nor my friends
with same computers succeded in doing it, so please share your secret with us, although it is not relevant right now (we threw the 486's a year ago, partly because of MP3 :)), we still
are computer freaks, and have the desire to learn new/old tricks.
sfealy: This duscussion is not about any of us getting points, it's purely educational, I refuse
to get points for this question (what can you do with these quality points anyway?), so please reject my answer if any of it is untrue.
FINiK out.
Well there is a long talking about system requerements, but the question was, which software. Now I use 486 DX2-80MHz, 16 MB Ram and WINPLAY play MP3s pretty well. So I am sure you will get him at www.download.com or www.tucows.com or other software servers. Enjoy listening.
ASKER
I am Quite Happy To Accept All Answers
I Will Give Winamp & Winplay a Try.
To J Powers,
The Sound Card Is a ESS1869 and came out
of my Pentium Running Win98 (I replaced
it with Sound Blaster Live).
But The Weirdest Thing is when I installed the ESS Card in the 486/66
Win95 Did Not Recognise it's Existance
So for the Sake of peace of mind I
installed Win98 on it so I could use
the diagnostic tools to find the conflict but Win98 "Forced" the card
to be recognised and it worked but we
all know that the old 486/66 in not capable of running Win98 so I removed it and done a clean install of Win95 and I still cnnot get the Card to Be
recognised any answers???
I Will Give Winamp & Winplay a Try.
To J Powers,
The Sound Card Is a ESS1869 and came out
of my Pentium Running Win98 (I replaced
it with Sound Blaster Live).
But The Weirdest Thing is when I installed the ESS Card in the 486/66
Win95 Did Not Recognise it's Existance
So for the Sake of peace of mind I
installed Win98 on it so I could use
the diagnostic tools to find the conflict but Win98 "Forced" the card
to be recognised and it worked but we
all know that the old 486/66 in not capable of running Win98 so I removed it and done a clean install of Win95 and I still cnnot get the Card to Be
recognised any answers???
Is it a plug-n-play card? I have also have some ESS card, I don't remember the number, but I think it is some older version. It worked on my DX2 with all operating systems I had there (95, linux), and the same card works on my new PII
with (98, NT, Linux). The only problem I had was on NT,I had to download the drivers from the site and install manually. But my card is not PnP. Now, I remember, that my 95 never guessed the same model (is 1688 or smth), it guessed smth else, but worked fine. I once installed manually the right drivers, but saw no effect, so I right on the next reboot-reinstall I went back to win95 default one.
So, 95 doesn't autoreconize it, have you tried
manually, now, when you know the IRQ, DMA, PORT combination?
with (98, NT, Linux). The only problem I had was on NT,I had to download the drivers from the site and install manually. But my card is not PnP. Now, I remember, that my 95 never guessed the same model (is 1688 or smth), it guessed smth else, but worked fine. I once installed manually the right drivers, but saw no effect, so I right on the next reboot-reinstall I went back to win95 default one.
So, 95 doesn't autoreconize it, have you tried
manually, now, when you know the IRQ, DMA, PORT combination?
Ok, you decide either to use Winamp in 22 Khz mono with good environment and options or Winplay 44 KHz stereo with quite lowly options. But important is sound I hope.