I have something slightly different for you today. In one of my totally-not-garbage-electronics storage trash bins I
found a somewhat old MP3 Player labelled as "Hyundai" "Digital MP3 Player" "HD-MPF-825/12". I put a new battery in it,
connected headphones and turned it on. A welcome screen. Music started playing and of course it had to be a piece that
thrown me into nostalgia.
I didn't find certain production date or any related documentation. I probably didn't dig deep enough and I'm not
very good at finding things through Wayback Machine. Model identifier, specs and files stored suggest that this device
was produced sometime between 1998 and 2002. I compared it to several models that I found manuals for and it seems close
to MP566, MP1281, MP567FM, MP755FM, MP1190R, and MP1220. Naming scheme doesn't seem consistent as MPF825 doesn't really
fit between the MP755FM and MP828 FM Sport very well functionally and especially aesthetically. Label on the device is
different, too, "MPF-825/12" despite probably fitting more as "MP825 FM" to the rest of the names I found.
Unless they just didn't have any sense of direction.
It has three major functions: playback, recording and FM receiver. User may play music or any of the recordings.
Music playback supports MP3 and WMA formats and LRC lyrics. Recordings are done in WAV format. Playback supports A-B
mode, pausing, seeking and volume control. FM receiver stores 30 channels that can be set between 87.5 MHz and 108.0
Mhz. FM mode has awkward controls.
The rest of menus are, let's say, OK. You can choose equalizer settings from presets, change playback mode (e.g.,
repeat all), change screen contrast and backlight colour, choose between power saving (I assume, it's "powerset") modes,
change interface language, and change recording settings (e.g., sampling rate).
Some other menus are as awkward as FM. The primary reason is inconsistency for what certain buttons do in what menu.
The other reasons are: intuitive actions are not a thing and other settings making fun of your choices. The best example
of this is "About" menu/page that displays version information and storage statistics.
Storage is around 496 MiB. Advertised as "512 MB" I suppose.
Sound quality is comparable (if not equal) to my audio card and phone. However, unlike some audiophiles I know claim
they have, I can't tell difference between 32 bit and 64 bit processors running Foobar2000. I can't run Foobar to begin
with, since I use Linux.
As for what was stored on it. The oldest file is a voice recording seemingly from the 27th of December 2002:
I'm not sure whether this actually is from 2002 nor do I remember the situation. I mean, I remember countless cases
in which I personally created similar sounds but not when I held this MP3 player in my hands and around the date. An
easy way to verify it would be to record new thing and check the date.
Today is also 27th of December 2002. It's exactly 19:44:58 all day, too.
Weirdly specific. For a moment I was thinking about disassembling it to check how exactly it is built and if there
are any obvious shortcomings in the design that could result in this. It could be a date and time related to the
lifetime of this device. Or a simple bug in the firmware. All speculations.
There's a "SETTINGS.DAT" 492 bytes file that I assume holds selected settings. It is also marked with the same date.
I opened it with hexdump(1) trying to make sense out of it at first glance. There are some patterns to it.
Changing settings and diffing proved that it hold settings and better shows the structure than just stupidly looking at
it:
> 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 00 00 00
> 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 01 00 00
> 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 02 00 00
< 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 03 00 00
> 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 04 00 00
> 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 05 00 00
> 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 06 00 00
This is the difference between colours of the backlight. Don't worry, you don't really need to see them. There's also
a "auto" mode that should be called "disco". It switches colour when you press buttons:
< 00000020 00 b6 49 40 03 00 00 35 00 00 b7 49 40 03 00 00
< 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 03 00 00
< 00000150 7a 47 40 03 00 00 01 00 00 94 47 40 03 00 00 00
< 000001c0 00 00 94 49 40 09 00 00 35 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
> 00000020 00 b6 49 40 03 00 00 36 00 00 b7 49 40 03 00 00
> 00000140 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 79 47 40 03 00 00 06 00 00
> 00000150 7a 47 40 03 00 00 00 00 00 94 47 40 03 00 00 00
> 000001c0 00 00 94 49 40 09 00 00 36 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
It was compared to red and green was last colour before I connected it to the PC.
I did not disassembly it because it looks like I would need to or easily break certain pieces. I didn't want that.
Graphical interfaces between MPF825 and other models from the manuals I found is similar. "About" view contains
version number but I sadly do not own any other devices from this series and can't use version to try to project it into
timeline. Even then, it would be under assumption that version incremented over selected period and not, let's say, went
down.
Back to the content. What music did I find there?
Most of the pieces were from 2011, 2012 and 2013. Luckily, it seems that it did not contain anything that I would
scream in pain seeing now. On contrary, to prove my beliefs, it seems I have mostly consistent and matured music taste.
Other than couple of artists and/or songs that I simply forgotten there wasn't really any surprises. I mean, there
shouldn't be.
What's consistent is presence of Arjen Anthony Lucassen's work. In this
case it was The Human Equation. If you never
listened to anything from Arjen, do it right now. Next, Devin Townsend's Epicloud.
Some Gamma Ray and Axxis. Of course, I had to have some odd things, too. Like anime soundtracks. Tasogare Otome x
Amnesia, which surprised me, because I most likely didn't hear anything from it since 2012. I tried lyrics function on
these and it seems to work nicely, too!
Most nostalgic ones were Spice and Wolf and Tytania. I just remembered that I have been mentoring an intern a year or
so ago and he had Holo poster visible in his work area.
Couple of songs from Katie Melua and Norah Jones that I did not listen to since around that time, too. It seems
Loreena Mckennitt lasted the longest for me.
That sums most of it. If won't research more and/or disassembly it, what's next? Is there anything? Yep. I want to
select some things that I listen to often now, some things that I liked from recent anime, and maybe something more.
Then put it in this little MP3 player along most of the things it already had in it.
Then I'll hope it'll last another 10 years.
Despite all the flaws, I think there are nice touches that we can bring back from the not so far past.
But why 27 December 2002? What does it mean!?