MP3 CDROM Player

It's not really fun (although quite inexpencive in cases where you already have a computer) to boot up your pc just to playback a single title.

The idea for this player is back in 1997 when the real audio format was in widespread use.

The problem with the real audio format was (and still is) that it is proprietary, ie., no free sources for decoding and/or encoding are available nor is there any player that does not need a pc.

At about that time I first came into touch with the mp3 format. Some of you might still know the "famous" dist10 distribution from the Fraunhofer Institute where they published the sources for an encoder and a decoder.

But computer power, especially those of embedded microcontroller seemed far away from beeing adequate for this job. Hence I decided to wait for a decoderchip that does the decoding work mostly by itself leaving only the operation of cdrom and display to the microcontroller. Thus making it possible to use some fairly cheap chip for this purpose.

It took over a year from that point until a mp3 decoder chip was really available. I started this project back in march, 1998 when the first mpeg decoder chip (the mas3507d) became available from intermetal.

So, if you would like to know some more information about the project as well as how to build your own player without the need for a conventional PC, just goon and navigate through this site.

Have fun! I'd like to hear from you! To contact me, feel free to drop me an email: mailto:vanmegen@gmx.de or contact me by snail mail. You can find my address on the copyright page.

Important Note: All material on this website is published only to allow private persons to build their own player. Any commercial use of this material is strictly prohibited unless you have a written agreement with the author! all products and names and product names are (of course) trademarks of their respected owner. the absence of a trademark symbol does not indicate that the name may be freely used.

This shows the current prototype

The next step was to make a better design:

The final version will use the following board: