I use to have a Cyrix 5x86-120. It's basically a suped up 486 running at
120mhz. It plays MP3's fine in Win98 from a fresh boot. But that's all it
can do. If I play a song I can't do anything else or it'll start to skip.
Playing the songs in mono was okay but everything else is slloooow. and
you can only do one thing at time. At 100mhz, it plays mono, but stereo it
skips like hell. 486-120 may be the minimum but I'd go with a Pentium-100
at least.
This brings up another question regarding a comp in your car to use as a
MP3 player. I was thinking about doing the same thing with my old
computers but how do you prevent the computer from just turning off while
it's running when you shut off your engine? Turning off the computer when
it's doing something is not a good idea. And you also have to wait till
the computer boots up before you can do anything. Booting up takes
anywhere from 30secs to a couple of minutes. So anytime you park the car,
and then start the engine again you have to go through the entire boot up
sequence. Does linux let you do "suspend to harddrive/instant on"? which
allows you to have the computer instantly turn on without booting. It also
turns off with the computer with one button and saves where you left off?
Some modern desktops and laptops have this feature which is tied in with
the motherboard.
That's the only way I can see how this would be viable. I know that if I
shut down Linux or Win98, while it's doing something, it scans the HD the
next time it boots up and reports lost chains and errors etc. This also
adds to the amount of time it takes to boot up. This isn't very good for
the HD either.
>On Sat, 27 Mar 1999 14:26:59 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>Hi all.
>>
>>I am thinking of taking an old computer and putting it in the trunk of my
car,
>>with the cdrom and a numeric laptop keypad in the stereo slots.
>>
>>Does anyone know what kind of a computer would be bare minumum to play mp3s?
>>This computer would be doing nothing but playing music, so should a
486/66 or
>>100 cut it?
