A New Spin on Retro Music Gamers

Up to now, there was a various array of bodily media for knowledge storage, together with numerous sizes of floppy disks, CD-ROMs, MiniDiscs, and Blu-ray discs. These totally different storage choices every had their very own distinctive allure. They allowed us to hold our knowledge round with us, share or commerce music with pals, and apart from that, they only seemed actually cool. It’s arduous to compete with the rainbow impact produced by an optical disc.

After all these earlier storage mediums additionally had some very vital limitations. Particularly, they may not retailer all that a lot data, and so they is also a bit cumbersome to lug round or search via to seek out the one you wished. So when the costs of flash reminiscence began to plummet, just about each machine that beforehand used another sort of storage made the swap to flash.

YouTuber befinitiv was just lately reminiscing a few mini CD-based MP3 participant that was manufactured within the early days of the transition to flash reminiscence, when it was nonetheless preferable to make use of optical media the place giant quantities of information wanted to be saved. It’s actually true that the smartphones we feature round with us in our pockets can retailer much more music on them — and do absolutely anything else whereas they’re at it. But, they don’t do the job with the type that these older gamers did.

So, befinitiv determined to make a standalone music participant for the trendy period. The thought was to make use of fashionable elements to do away with a number of the limitations of older applied sciences, but additionally incorporate optical media as a result of … effectively, simply because.

A serious limitation of the mini CD music gamers of yesterday was their capability — they may solely retailer about 200 MB of information. So, befinitiv determined to construct the brand new participant round a a lot greater capability 8cm Blu-ray disc (commonplace disc sizes are 12 cm). This drive was acquired by scavenging a standard-size Blu-ray drive from a laptop computer, then Dremeling off some “further” bits to chop it right down to measurement. This was then fitted right into a customized 3D-printed case.

A customized PCB was designed round an Arm system-on-chip working a Linux working system. A SATA interface allowed this board to speak with the drive, and a lithium-ion battery offered the system with energy. A small show was included into the aspect of the participant, and some buttons permit the person to manage its operation. Apparently, the working system is loaded onto an SD card, which is able to storing many occasions extra knowledge than the Blu-ray disc, rendering it utterly pointless. However this construct has little to do with practicality, so I’ll simply transfer proper alongside.

One other oddity of this music participant is that writable 8cm Blu-ray discs actually aren’t one thing you should purchase. Are you able to guess what befinitiv’s answer to this drawback was? That’s proper — a Dremel! Normal 12cm discs have been trimmed right down to measurement, and considerably surprisingly, that labored out simply advantageous. Don’t count on to get the complete storage of an 8cm disc, nonetheless, since these customized mini discs are a bit tough across the edges … actually.

After making this little music participant, befinitiv mentioned that it was pointless to construct. It’s actually impractical in at present’s world, however I feel there are many good causes to make a tool like this. Check out the video and see what you suppose.