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At the time I designed this player, 64MB Flash MP3 players cost ~$250 and there was only speculation about hard-disk players. The first major commercial hard-disk MP3 player, the Creative Nomad Jukebox, went on the market in late 2000. I wrote this about the Procyon MP3 Player when documenting it for the first time in the Fall of 2000: |
Procyon MP3 is a hardware MPEG 1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio player which supports user-controlled playback of MP3 files stored on a typical IDE hard disk connected to the device. With the emergence of MP3 as a popular standard for storing, playing, and exchanging music, droves of electronics and computer companies have introduced both portable and desktop MP3 player devices into the consumer market. The rise of MP3 has also produced dozens of personal engineering projects like this one. However, where companies must directly cater to their conceived or pre-conceived notions of the consumer market, hobbyists and engineers are free to explore MP3 player solutions that many companies would balk at producing and selling.
