Re: [TCLUG:18008] Playing MP3s on old hardware

[David Wood <jbevren@yahoo.com>]

On Mon, 22 May 2000, Perry Hoekstra wrote:

> Yaron wrote:
> > 
> >   Hi,
> > 
> > Anyone know if there's anything I can do to get an old P75 to play MP3s
> > decently? I don't want to reduce the bitrate further. I wouldn't have a
> > problem hacking up this laptop (;
> 
> Seems to me there was a post long time ago about a person who was
> experimenting with the lowest level of hardware for MP3s.  If memory
> serves, this person stated that the lowest level found is a P90 with
> absolutly nothing else going on.

y'know, I used to play mp3's all the time on my 5x86-133 (133mhz 486, just
barely faster than a P75 for integer speed, but much slower for fpu).  It
ran mp3's just fine so long as you werent in X or compiling programs.

Since then, I've clocked it up to 160mhz, giving it an (estimated) p80
speed, and it did okay playing mp3's as long as I had a buffer (mpg123
-b2500) going, even while running netscape 3.03. :)

This, of course, is a desktop/tower 486 I built myself, equipped with a
soundblaster 16, 256k cache, and from time to time varying between 16 and 32
megs of ram.

What may be the case is that your P75 is short on cache ram (typical for
laptops).  Have a look inside and see if you can pull the cpu out and
replace it with something faster (say a chip with a 4x  clock, lending you
p100 speed).

-David