This is the homepage of J.A.M.P., my CAR MP3 Player. It's name stands for "Just Another MP3 Player", because I'm not the first with this idea (but naturally I had better ideas... ;-). On the other side I was just looking for a name for this project and "JAMP" is not that bad I think.
 

What's a CAR MP3 Player?

Well, many people have lots of CD's they want to listen in their car. The normal choice would be a CD changer, but CD changers are expensive and they can host just a few CD's (about 10 more or less). Some people who don't wanted to buy such equipment made their own "CD changer". But not for normal CD's (at least not only), but for MP3-CD's. MP3 (MPEG Layer 3) is the music compression standard that became very popular in the last years. With MP3, digital music takes up less space meaning you can store 10 times more music on the same space. In other words, a MP3-CD can be 10 hours long (more or less depending on the quality).
The problem is such MP3-CD's can't be played by a normal CD player. A computer or a complicated hardware must decode the MP3 data back to digital audio. A CAR MP3 player is just a computer with soundcard and CD-ROM drive that does just play MP3 CD's. Usually a Pentium 90 is enough for MP3 decoding so a (relatively) old computer can be used. Maybe you have somewhere a old computer lying around? Well, since it's calld CAR MP3 player the computer-player is installed inside a car (as CD-changer alternative). Other systems (MP3 players) are mounted inside old CD Players, so most players don't have their original computer case, they don't even have a monitor or standard keyboard.
Last but not least a CAR MP3 player is a challenge for computer enthusiasts because it's not that easy to build such a system.
 

JAMP features

I built JAMP to exactly mach my needs, meaning it's a bit different than most other CAR MP3 players:
 

Display	Graphic 128x64 pixels with backlight
Keyboard	12-keys with self-made encoder
Processor	Intel Pentium 90 MHz
HDD	Seagate 1.2 GB
CD-ROM	Mitsumi 4X
Sound Card	"OPTi S-929 Sound Player", actually it's a Windows Sound System card (Crystal CODEC)
DC-DC Converter	Lambda PT30-12T
AMP connection	home: stereo's LINE-IN  foreign car: cassette adaptor  own car: car radio AUX-IN
Software	Self-made. Runs under plain MS-DOS. Written in FreePascal (FPC).  MP3 decoder: MpegTV's XAudio  Sound driver: MIDAS Sound System

Other features:

• Runs with both 110/220V power supply and 12V from car battery
• Graphical display with sprectrogram, lyrics display and user friendly menu
• Graphical 10-band equalizer
• Playlist support, shuffle
• Supports SingIt! lyric files for karaoke
• CD's can be changed when player is running
• MP3-CD database, once inserted the software knows it's contents meaning CD is imediately available after insterting and songs can be searched on all known CD's
• normal Audio-CD support
• plays all types of MPEG files (WAV, VOC support could be added easily
• excellent quality: contrary to all expectations I can't hear any interferences, even at high volume! The DAC should also have high quality as Crystal normally makes good DACs.
• portable: well, not really portable as a walkman but it's nowhere fixed. I can use it at home, in *any* car, etc.

• Support for CASIO-7000 SX digital camera to download images on the hard disk!
• internal (small) speakers
• ...who knows what next. This project is never really done.

Click on the images to get a larger view!
 

The inside of the player	Another view
Back side (connectors)	Side view (CD-ROM)
The console	The same again...
The 128x64 pixels display	...and again
The cigarette connector	The cassette adapter
The original case of the PC. Had first a 486/66 inside, then the Pentium/90 and now... nothing! ;-)	Coming soon:  More detailed information and some more images

Images taken using a CASIO QV-7000SX digital camera.