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This isn't a chip fab - they're just stuffing boards... still, nice photos of the whole process. I had a chance to see a shop like this in person, and took a bunch of photos and even some video (536K MPEG) of the process. The machines are quite mesmerizing (sp?) to watch, and it's amazing the amount of human and automated quality control that goes into manufacturing this stuff.

Perhaps it's this link (product) instead of this broken link...

Why don't people who manufacture these devices document the protocol and put it up on the web?

Uh... here you go:

The Slim UDP Protocol

The SliMP3 is less polished

It's been quite a while since Taco wrote his review of our SliMP3 product. The unit he tested was a hand-made prototype that I built in my garage!

Since then, the product is definitely more polished. We've sold a few hundred, we now have a proper case for it, and we have nearly a dozen software developers working on it.

If you're in the market for a network MP3 player, please check out the SliMP3. It is the ONLY completely open-source player, and the ONLY one to use a high quality vacuum fluorescent display instead of a tiny backlit LCD.

If you have any questions about the product, I will answer them under this thread. Sorry for plugging my product after some else's review, but I really think you'll find the SliMP3 more interesting. :)

<plug>This is great news for Ethernet MP3 player

The open development team behind the SliMP3 has created one of largest Perl programs in history. We've always ensured that the software is easy to install, and supports as many platforms as possible. That means we have to do certain things like avoiding fork(), and making sure that the Time::HiRes module is available with the distribution, pre-compiled for many architectures. We also deal with the path name differences between Windows and Unix. Those are the main differences - there are about a half dozen other little things, but all in all Perl is a great language and runs well on all platforms.

Version 1.0 of our software *was* compatible with MacOS9. We dropped support for OS9 after that, due to the numerous limitations and problems with the outdated MacPerl. OSX has never been a problem, because it's just Unix and it comes with Perl 5.6.1.

However, now that MacPerl 5.6.1 is available, there is a good chance that we'll be able to get the product working on MacOS Classic again. I am starting work on it today!

Hooray for the MacPerl team!

It used to be the only one was Lucent's Orinoco/EC - very expensive and not in stores.

There is now a product from Buffalo Technology which does this, call the Airstation Bridge

A lot of people are using these with our ethernet MP3 player. Everybody says the Airstation works great, and it's only about $160. I can't say I've used one yet, myself.

I've mirrored it at the URL below. Photos will be up as soon as they've finished downloading. :)

http://www.slimdevices.com/CFforAppleII

I dunno if my server's going to hold up any better, but it's worth a shot. :)

Just in case, a couple snippets from the page:

ast Update: Jan 17, 2002 - 11:40am CST

Project Introduction:

This page describes a project to create an IDE / CompactFlash Interface card for 8 bit Apple II series of computers. The
card is ProDOS 8 compatible. I did this project over the span of several months. Although it took much longer than
expected, it was a fun project. This project is very much a case of old technology (the
Apple II computer) meets new (IDE / CompactFlash cards and Altera CPLDs).
My reasoning for this project is described in detail in the last section, but suffice it to say, I
wanted to be able to pull out my old Apple and use it from time to time to reminisce about the
early days of personal computers. I wanted a reliable way to store my Apple II programs and
data files for many years to come. Due to the Apple II's floppy drives long term reliability
prospects and my general laziness, I decided a mass storage device is what I needed.

If there was enough interest in this project I would love to make a small batch of boards to
sell to those interested. But I would need at least 10 orders, and it may be hard to find 10 people interested in something
like this. I can be reached at rich@dreher.net
Currently I have only built a prototype, which means no extensive testing has been done
yet.

The Apple II was an excellent example of an open system, with unheard-of-today
documentation like system schematics, firmware listings, and peripheral design tips. Indeed
the only thing that was totally hidden was the source for the BASIC interpreter - "AppleSoft"
written by giga-monopoly Microsoft. In the spirit of the Apple II this project is completely
open.

Project Definition:

A CompactFlash/IDE Interface for 8 bit Apple II family of computers
Support for up to 64 Meg, (two ProDOS 32Meg drives)
On board EPROM for the ProDOS 8 driver code
Allow booting ProDOS directly from the Interface card (for a floppy-less system)
Current version of driver code requires a 65C02. (IIe Enhanced or later)

Project Prototype Hardware:

My first prototype used no discreet 74HCTxxx series parts and all logic was in the CPLD, but due to several unrelated
problems with construction and the consumption of all PLD resources, I decided to build a second prototype with using
74hct373 parts, this time paying more careful attention to power distribution. I still believe it would be easy to eliminate
the discreet 74xxx series parts if you used a larger PLD, like the EPM70128S. Although it might not be very cost
effective.

Here is the schematic I developed AFTER completing my prototype. That means this schematic has not been tested. If
you decide to build this project, you might want to check with me for any changes first. Also if you find any mistakes
please let me know. Project Schematic: ORCAD Capture Format

If you just want a quick look at the schematic click here to view a 640k jpeg of the schematic. Modem users: sorry about
the size, but I wanted it to be clear and readable as possible.

Prototype Parts List:

1 - SanDisk CompactFlash 64Meg or 32Meg
1 - CompactFlash to IDE conversion board - Adtron SDDA-03 available from EMJ Embedded
1 - ISA bus prototype board (trimmed to fit into the apple bus) Jameco part #21531
1 - 44pin PLCC socket. Jameco part #71618
1 - 44pin PLCC wire-wrap socket. (http://smt-adapter.com/ - part #44PG-W or similar)
1 - Altera EPM7064SLC44-10F
1 - 27128 EPROM
2 - 74HCT373 transparent latch
2 - 74HCT245 bus transceiver
7 - 22ohm 1/8w resistors
5 - 0.1uf capacitors non-polarized (used for power supply bypass)
3 - 1.0uf capacitors non-polarized (used for power supply bypass)
10 - 30 pin wire wrap SIPP sockets. Jameco part #104053 (there were some leftover)
misc wire wrap tools and wire

The Ipic is almost certainly a hoax. This guy should *not* be taken seriously until he either:

- Posts some technical details as to how he managed to pull it off.
- Publishes his source
- Sells a product based on this
- Sets up a convincing demo

Having spent the better part of a year writing a TCP/IP stack for the PIC, I can tell you with certainly that the features and RFC compliance he claims are simply impossible to fit into the 12XXXX parts. The ROM space certainly isn't there, even if everything is tightly hand-coded in assembler. the more obvious limitation however, is RAM. He claims to be running full TCP on a part that doesn't even have the space to hold a minimum-size packet in RAM for checksumming. I could get into a zillion other impossibilities of this project, but it's easier to just show you this page, a commercial PIC TCP/IP stack), which shows exactly how much RAM/ROM it takes to fit a tight TCP/IP implementation into the PIC. There's just no way you could fit this much into the 12-bit PICs.

Very cool device, but $269 is pretty excessive considering you can get cheaper fully contained players for less. For example the 10G Neo Jukebox for $220. Hmm paradoxically you can buy the Neo Jukebox without the hard drive for an extra $10 at MTE.

I'm not saying don't buy one. The point is that you just know devices like this sliMP3 could be sold profitably for less than $50 if the volume was high enough. They are essentially the same as the Neo jukebox but with all the expensive components removed (battery, hard drive) and with an ethernet chip added. The Neo has a dinky remote control as well.

If you check out Slim Device's photos page, you can see just how 'garage' the company has been. It's pretty cool how they take you through the whole production process - almost makes me want to buy one just for that.

we have next to no DRAM on our boards - it's all SRAM and fast DPRAM

I'm very curious - do you have any idea what you're paying for SRAM? My company is paying $3.00 a pop for 128KB standard 60ns SRAMs, and it seems incredibly high in light of the plummeting DRAM prices. In fact SRAM prices don't seem to have budged in the last year.

Sorry, it was 4 gig when built, changed to a 20 gig drive sometime in the last year or so.

It's a K6 233, on a CHEAP all-in-wonder MB, running Redhat 4.2. Sits in the corner of the garage, goes down whenever the power fails but at no other time. (it's seen 460+ day uptimes, but the uptime counter rolls over at 497 days)

Contains my entire 300+ Cd collection, serves tunes to several XMMS(Linux) or WinAMP(dose) boxes, or my new toy, a SliMP3.

Life is good.

A) Do you even need that much bandwidth for this application?

From the FAQ:
How fast does my network need to be to use SliMP3? Is 10Mbps enough, or do I need 10/100?
An inexpensive 10Mbps hub has about 25 times the capacity needed to stream MP3 audio at the highest quality (384Kbps). Typically, MP3s are encoded at 128Kbps to 192Kbps. You do not need 10/100 Ethernet - SliMP3 is compatible with fast Ethernet LANS, as long as your hub/switch also supports 10Mbps (most do).

B. Are there runs in your house that are more than 100M?

Balanced signals. For the price of this box, one can have balanced line drivers for every room in the house, which can consist of as little as an op amp, or a transformer, or a somewhat more-expensive pre-fab box.

Interesting. Can you suggest some links?
(Of course, going this route means that you have to run more cable in the walls. (I presume every geek here *already* has Cat5 or 802.11 in the house.))

There probably is a Web interface for Winamp...why do you care?

For those rooms where there *is* a computer, it would be nice to have some control over the server. Web is just the easiest. (Presuming a mixed user/computer environment.)

The remote is a nice touch. And if you'd studied your X10 popups like a good boy

I have one of these. (I used to buy stuff from them BEFORE they did all the popup stuff.)
But the slimdevices has a display on it. Something just a remote won't.

And, it's vastly easier to install audio wiring to multiple points than computer networks.

Keep in mind the audience here. We aren't talking about our grandmothers. We are talking NERDS. I suspect that the majority of us *already* have ethernet run through the house. To install audio wiring means getting back into the walls all over again.
And either way, I think it is easier to run ethernet.

No need for a hub,

What geek here doesn't allready have *at least* one?

or expensive termination tools

are you talking 10-base-2 here? Or do you mean things like crimpers?

though I prefer Belden 2200...and can withstand a lot of abuse during installation

Hmmmm... sounds interesting. Thanks for the tip.

Especially when it doesn't even match the rest of the stereo - did you even read the review?

I not only read the review, I also have read the site and seen the pictures.
I don't need to have everything in the same size box. (Out of the 10 boxes I do have, they are not all the same size anyway.) I think it looks just fine sitting on top of the amp.
Like a little high-tech object d'art. (But once again we are talking about geeks here.)

Seriously though I happened to notice the specs at http://www.slimdevices.com/features.shtml, and that the CPU is a Microchip PIC16F877 : For anyone who has used one of these, you quickly learned that using the term CPU related to one of these is a bit of a misnomer.

Other codecs (Ogg vorbis, WMA, raw PCM)

The SliMP3 supports MPEG 1/2, layers 2/3, for both VBR and fixed data rates up to 384Kbps (the maximum for MP3). The SliMP3 server software will soon support automatic endoing/transcoding from other formats, but the player will still speak MPEG.

These are beer-guided MP3 players, evidinced by the second photograph down.

Not sure I want my MPEG decoder chips soldered by some beer-swilling hacker... :)

In fact the website says "The SliMP3 is not yet ready for sale. If you would like to receive an e-mail when our first units become available, please submit the form below." so I guess right now it isn't available at all.

FYI, we've scaled up production and we expect our first batch of professionally manufactured players to be available by the end of December.

Plus it's about $70 more expensive even though it contains less hardware (price of hand assembly).

It's more expensive because it's better, not because we're making them in smaller qty. We've invested a considerable amount of R&D into custom software and hardware, and most of it is open and hackable - this isn't just another embedded PC. Also we're using a high quality 40x2 Vacuum fluorescent display instead of a backlit LCD. Most folks think these features are worth the extra $$.

I think both these devices should be updated to include a TOSlink/coaxial output (preferably both).

It would be nice, but you have to understand that it's not worth the extra $20 to the 90% of our customers who will never use it. Also, the other 10% will probably realize that the CD player DAC is going to sound just as good with MP3 as the one in their receiver.

In fact the website says "The SliMP3 is not yet ready for sale. If you would like to receive an e-mail when our first units become available, please submit the form below." so I guess right now it isn't available at all.

FYI, we've scaled up production and we expect our first batch of professionally manufactured players to be available by the end of December.

Plus it's about $70 more expensive even though it contains less hardware (price of hand assembly).

It's more expensive because it's better, not because we're making them in smaller qty. We've invested a considerable amount of R&D into custom software and hardware, and most of it is open and hackable - this isn't just another embedded PC. Also we're using a high quality 40x2 Vacuum fluorescent display instead of a backlit LCD. Most folks think these features are worth the extra $$.

I think both these devices should be updated to include a TOSlink/coaxial output (preferably both).

It would be nice, but you have to understand that it's not worth the extra $20 to the 90% of our customers who will never use it. Also, the other 10% will probably realize that the CD player DAC is going to sound just as good with MP3 as the one in their receiver.

Apologies to people who read my previous comments on this topic, but when considering these devices, please also consider the "SliMP3" from Slim Devices.

Advantages include :

• open-source cross-platform server (just a perl script).
• high quality vacuum-fluorescent display (it's nice)
• low-noise, low-power, low-heat-output hardware (no fan, no heatsink even!).

It doesn't have a great big amplifier included so it should be alot less power hungry and won't bottleneck your sound quality. It also has a much better display and open source server software. Too bad it doesn't have digital audio output.

If we learned anything last year, it's that you can't make money giving stuff away for free (duh). But "freeness" barely scratches the surface of what open source is all about.

I remember that the user's manual for my first Apple computer came with a huge fold-out schematic of the entire motherboard. The design wasn't free, but it was open insofar as I didn't have to reverse engineer it just to hack on it. Do you think any more than a tiny handful of Apple's customers had the faintest clue what to do with the schematic? Or course not.

However, when you open up your product, even if it's not to the full extent of GPLing everything, you're inviting hackers and hobbyists to develop all sorts of software and peripherals... AND THIS HELPS YOUR BUSINESS ENORMOUSLY!!! Open source developers sometimes do it because they want to give something to the world. Other times, we do it because we just want to improve the stuff we own. We share our changes because it doesn't cost us anthing to do it.

It's not too hard to think of business models where both your customers *and* your business can benefit from open source. Make a software product and open source the hardware, or <plug>make a hardware product and open source the software</plug>. You could even make a software product and open just part of it. Neither the open source community nor your customers will demand that you give away the farm for nothing.

Anyone out there have one of the SlimDevices?
There was a buzz when it was mentioned earlier. But I haven't heard from anyone that bought one since.

I rather like the idea of streaming from a computer over ethernet better than the HP solution of having the HD fixed in the device.

For one thing, I have much more storage on the computer. Most of my interacting with the MP3 files will be done on the computer anyway, and I already have a CD-R on it. I would suspect that I have greater control over playlists and the like from a computer than the HP device.

Then there is the issue of DRM which I have more control over on my computer. As this is a consumer device, I presume they expect that most people will rip their files in the device's CD-RW drive (although it includes a NIC for HomePNA, most consumers are the 12:00-blinking-set and may not even bother with that) at which time the file can be marked.

In fact, the only thing the HP device seems to do that one of the other products won't is act kinda like a WebTV for internet music (although the only connection is through a v.90 modem. *ICK!*).

That said, can I get a bit more input on the RioReceiver, the Auditron, and especially the SlimDevices from people that have them?

Everyone's bemoaning the fact that these HDTV cards don't have linux drivers and use encryption. Well, is there any reason why we can't just build our own cards?

If the people at SlimDevices can create their own network-based MP3 player with off-the-shelf chips, why can't they (or someone similarly talented) create a little device that takes off-air HDTV signals, feeds it into standard chipsets, and outputs compressed (MPEG-2?) HDTV video over ethernet? Get the little thing responding to simple commands over IP (maybe port 80, just have something in your browser that can handle video/mpeg-2 streams), and you've got a great thing going.

Make 'em cheap, put a few of these in your basement, have 'em all stream to a big RAID box, and then all you need is for the same guys to build a nice ethernet-to-video box for the set-top.

Seriously, though -- how available are these chips? Could someone easily build something that takes "GET CHANNEL 37.3" on an IP port and streams MPEG back? If I recall correctly, off-air HDTV streams are *not* encrypted, right?

I hear B.I.O. Bugs are quite hackable, and are based on work by roboticist Mark Tilden.

The SliMP3 is quite hackable, as the code's all in Perl (see the developer's list).

LEGO MindStorms are a perennial favorite, and are extremely hackable.

And let's not forget TiVo, which is a hacker's playground.

Finally, one of the new Compaq iPaqs can be hours of fun once you install Linux on it and begin having wireless fun with it.

The SliMP3 ethernet MP3 player.

• Vacuum fluorescent display (nice : sharp, legible).
• Open Source streaming server written in perl runs on Windows, Linux, Mac.
• Small, low-power, low-noise device, so you can leave it always-on

I plan to put my own review up on my website. Mine is an early hand-soldered model, but they plan to move to mass-production which should bring the price down I would think.

Cheers,

Chris Morgan

The question of "is it practical to code is assembler" is utterly meaningless, without some context. If you're writing firmware for a low cost, mass produced embedded product, your development time/cost is not crititcal, and you plan to sell a million units, then by all means, code *everything* in assembler. Save $2 by using a smaller CPU/RAM/ROM, and that's an extra $2 million you can afford to spend on development.

In this case, the guy was writing an operating system. It fits on a floppy disk. It's really fast. So what, you might say... I have a $1K PC with an 80GB hard drive, what the hell do I care how fast printk() is, or the size of my kernel image.

Now imagine you're developing a router, or a Tivo, or an Internet toaster. You need an OS. Your choices are Linux, running on a $40 ARM or PowerPC chip, or Menuet, running on a $10 i386.

Besides the compelling practical applications for MenuetOS, I'm sure the guy learned one hell of a lot about computer architecture in the process of writing it. It's not just about hack value - coding in ASM is a wonderful learning experience.