[olug] $10 / 2GB MP3 player for Linux

[Will Langford]

> Sorry, firmware is software, not hardware.
> I don't know of any specialized hardware MP3 decoder chips, either.

A few years back, I bought a stand alone MP3 kit.  It came with a PCB
and an LCD.  On the PCB was a speaker amp with RCA and headphone
jacks.  You supply an IDE CDROM drive, an... AT power supply, buttons
and volume knob,  and build a case for it.  To play music you'd put a
CD in it that had mp3's on it.

It might have had a small uC, but the two main chips were an FPGA for
IDE and an MP3 decoder chip.  So... basically the FPGA (and uC if
there was one), fed the MP3 stream to the decoder.

I did have it built for a short while, but never got the plexi case
perfect.  It should still be sitting around in a box around here
somewhere if someone is really curious about the chip.

-Will