[plug] RE: Laptop problems

[Andrew Francis]

On Sun, 30 Sep 2001, [iso-8859-1] Andrew Furey wrote:

> > im not sure about linux but win95 wont play mp3s
> > even on a 66mhz - so you might have a bit of trouble
> > there
> 
> I had a 386DX 40MHz (still do, but don't use it), and
> it wouldn't play them - needs a coprocessor for a
> start.
> HTH
> Andrew

I recall that there's an MP3 player for linux out there that
uses fixed point rather than floating point math. Makes
sense for really old machines - up until the Pentium floating
point was a lot, lot slower than fixed point. Still was on 
some clone chips labeled as Pentium equals - hence why Quake
was dog-slow on AMD/Cyric compared to Intel for a while.

I heard from a friend obsessed with all of this gadgetising
that 66 - 75mhz will do you for 128kbit/s MP3s - but only
if you have a system 100% dedicated to just that, running an
OS that gives the player enough cycles (read: not Windows).

-- 
Andrew Francis
locust at iinet.net.au