[SunRescue] MP3s

[James Lockwood]

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Chris Kozlowski wrote:

> No kidding?  What speed is the LX?  My Classic will not play
> them correctly, using either xaudio or mpeg3play.  I was under
> the impression that they are similar machines.

The Classic has only 8 bit audio hardware which supports a maximum of 8KHz
mono.  I am not surprised that you weren't able to get MP3 audio playing
satisfactorily through this.

The LX goes up to 48KHz 16 bit stereo.  It plays MP3's quite well.  Both
use the same CPU, a 50MHz microSPARC-I.

Might I suggest that the builder of this project try to pick up an RDI
BriteLite portable SPARC either off of newsgroups or Ebay?  They're clunky
and old, but they use a regular sbus card to drive an LCD display and have
a powersupply to generate all the voltages required by an LX board off of
+12V IIRC.  He could plug the LCD sbus card into the LX (basically a
low-resolution cg3), use the powersupply to generate the voltages, and
build the backlit display panel (640x480) into the dashboard.  Easy
display output, just set the machine to boot into X and launch the MP3
player.  An input device could either be cobbled together with the serial
or parallel port, or an old Sun keyboard could be hacked apart and
switches hooked across key contacts. 

One other very handy feature of the LX is that it supports suspend/resume.
This would be a big help.

Heck, just add a cellular modem and a passenger could fire up a web
browser.  :)

-James