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Domain: mpsharp.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to mpsharp.com.

Comments · 8

  1. Remember: Today's SCO isn't the old SCO by callipygian-showsyst · · Score: 4, Interesting · on SCO Tells Courts What IBM Did Wrong
    I'm saddened by what's happened to SCO's brand. SCO used to be a cool company. The name stood for the Santa Cruz Operation, and it was a smallish company of some very bright people who brought Unix to Intel Architecture: first 80286 and then 80386 architecure and beyond.

    It was that got me involved in Un*x, back in 1988. I had decided it was time to move from the Long Island defense industry, and make a move to Silicon Valley. I started with Andy's "MINIX" and then paid the $1200 bucks or so for SCO Xenix, installed it on my 80386 PC (with an American Megatrends/Mylex motherboard!) and learned Unix (especially low-level matters like writing device drivers.) Shortly after, I was able to get a job with Olivetti Advanced Technology Lab in Cupertino.

    My job involved close interaction with the engineering staff at SCO--folks like Mike Patnode (whose name sounds like a Unix command) and others who knew SysV inside and out.

    The company is completely different now. The same in name only. They're not in Santa Cruz anymore (a hippy beach resort in Central California)--instead they're in Utah.

  2. Vorbis hardware players that exist *right* *now* by Z-MaxX · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Dell DJ: Yet Another MP3 Player
    From the current and rapidly expanding Vorbis Hardware list: Consumer products that support Vorbis natively:
  3. The Digital Jukebox by tot · · Score: 1 · on Component MP3/OGG Players?
    I have been thinking of building a digital jukebox like MP Sharp Technologies.

    It is a Linux box, plug in whatever network/audio card support you want.

  4. Re:Why? by smasch · · Score: 1 · on Linux-based Digital Audio Player with Ogg

    Okay, somehow I totally missed that Tech link. You are right about the fans, though. I just found the hardware list page, and I do find the hardware requirements rather high. 256 megs of RAM?? 700 MHz processor? I can excuse the high processor speed (as that may be easier to obtain) but the memory is major overkill. I've played MP3s and Vorbis files on my K6-2/300 with 64 megs of ram and I have never had a problem (except when compiling a kernel and running Mozilla while listening to music).

    Okay, I just noticied the hardware link on the top of this story. How it took me an hour to notice it I have no clue. Guess I'll shut up now and get some sleep... *thunk*

  5. Re:Why? by smasch · · Score: 1 · on Linux-based Digital Audio Player with Ogg

    Okay, somehow I totally missed that Tech link. You are right about the fans, though. I just found the hardware list page, and I do find the hardware requirements rather high. 256 megs of RAM?? 700 MHz processor? I can excuse the high processor speed (as that may be easier to obtain) but the memory is major overkill. I've played MP3s and Vorbis files on my K6-2/300 with 64 megs of ram and I have never had a problem (except when compiling a kernel and running Mozilla while listening to music).

    Okay, I just noticied the hardware link on the top of this story. How it took me an hour to notice it I have no clue. Guess I'll shut up now and get some sleep... *thunk*

  6. Re:Isn't he supposed to provide software copies? by PygmySurfer · · Score: 1 · on Linux-based Digital Audio Player with Ogg
    Sure he does.

    This page has links to the different software programs and the custom patches he wrote.

  7. Why? by smasch · · Score: 3, Insightful · on Linux-based Digital Audio Player with Ogg

    Okay, I don't see who would want it, other than to have something that plays OGGs. This thing looks like an old PC (and probably is), only supports MP3 and OGG (where's FLAC or WAV or anything else?), requires an internet connection, and the thing is huge (there's no excuse for it being anywhere near that size). The display is a 20 char by 4 line LED backlit LCD display. While this is easy to implement, they could have used a graphical display and had different font sizes, cool graphics, and maybe a better user interface. I also have to wonder how noisy it is, considering that most PCs have at least two fans. This thing really looks like a hack: if someone built one of these for himself it might be impressive, paying $1000 for it is simply a ripoff.

    I don't see what the market for this thing is: the real geeks would simply build their own that's both cheaper and has more features, while the average users would simply shrug it off for being ugly and for lack of features. Worse, it probably won't play any copy protected CDs^H^H^Hshiny plastic discs with music encoded on them.

  8. Re:looks could kill by AYEq · · Score: 1 · on Linux-based Digital Audio Player with Ogg

    If you click the tech link it says:

    The Jukebox is actually a Via C3 home built system designed to run silent and cool. It does not require cooling fans and makes very little hard disk noise