MP3 player questions

On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Oct 2011 06:00:40 -0500) it happened snipped-for-privacy@myplace.com wrote in :

Usually, from an older kid, when not connected to a PC, you press one of the buttons for say 10 seconds and then it comes on. OTOH >Philips products, I have a Philips Xpania (or something like that) portable mp3/CD player, it skips part of mp3 tracks... it was over a hundred $. Better spend the money on ebay. I have a beautiful mp3 player with radio and what not from ebay for that money inclusive shipping, and a amazing portable video player for double that money, also with radio, mp3, camera, recorder, and it plays xvid movies!

4 GB internal memory of course. USB stick was just as expensive locally.

RTFM.

From philips website:

On the Vibe's left side, you'll find a power switch that doubles as a button hold, leaving the right side with a menu option button and a volume rocker switch that's just big enough to be useful. The top of the Vibe is bare, but the bottom is riddled with openings for a Mini-USB connection,

3.5-millimeter headphone jack, lanyard loop (lanyard not included), and a pinhole microphone for the voice recorder.

W98 didn't support USB drives natively.

Yup. And a processor to "play" the files.

Exactly.

If it has a MIC input, it probably also has a built-in microphone and can be used as a voice notepad.

The "lock" switch is more like a "control lock" ("hold"). It guards against buttons being accidentally "pushed" while in use (e.g., imagine stuffing it in a pants pocket!)

Controls on most such devices do nothing while connected to PC. You have to transfer files (pictures, songs) to it from PC. Some devices are just mass storage devices, others require a special protocol to "communicate with".

More importantly, you have to know what formats the device will accept and whether or not files have to be converted before the device will recognize them. E.g., often video files need to be down-sampled before usable.

99.72% chance there is a mini-jack there for headphones. Keep looking.

Apple's iPod "Shuffle" has the headphone jack doing double duty as the USB (!) connection (special cable). Newer generation has even removed the buttons from the actual device and placed them (+, -) on the headphone cord! All that remains on the player is a power/shuffle switch.

[You can use regular headphones with the Shuffle but can't change the volume level *or* change songs! Of course, you are still limited by its lack of a display to see titles and figure out what is actually *on* the device. :-/ OTOH, it's about the size of a tie clip (and even has a similar fastener for clipping it to your clothing!) so it's hard to beat when walking, jogging, etc. and all you really want to do is *listen*]

I rescued a Zune which *looks* like it could be an interesting device (which amazed me -- coming from MS!). But, the internal hard drive has bad sectors and, typical for MS, there is no way to tell the device to mark those sectors as bad! :-/

((...)

Nup. The MIC label refers to the tiny hole near the corner which is a built-in microphone.

The jack between the MIC and the USB connector is where you plug your headphones in.

--Winston

r

If you install the 3rd party nushb3.1 on win98 it'll do USB support the same way a more modern OSes do. 98 does nearly everything a modern OS will if you install a list of 3rd party bits & pieces.

NT

Yep, you're right. The word "MIC" was so close to the headphone jack I thought it was for that. That very tiny hole is a built in mic. Thanks too all who replied and those PDF files, I was able to make this thing work. Sounds great when plugged into the AUX jack on my home stereo too. (But not quite as good as a vinyl record). I think it also has a built in radio, but I have not gotten that to work yet (not that I need another radio, considering the crap they play on the radio these days).

The mp3 players with a radio I've seen use the earphone wire as the antenna, so the length and placement of it will affect how the radio function works.