In a moment of weakness I _did_ buy my first MP3 player new-in-box on eBay.

@SarraceniaWilds @North I got those same headphones with an 00's MP3 player and they're still working great, so that may have been worth the price of admission right there. (The MP3 player also works, too: RCA Lyra, btw.)

@SarraceniaWilds @North The Lyra itself was an unabashed sack of shit, though. Its onboard media database had bugs and was prone to spontaneously corrupting. In particular, it refused to believe the song Long, Long, Long by the Beatles existed, and it was a good decade (!) before I noticed that I'd been listening to an incomplete White Album due to this glitch.

@North May your player be less buggy!

Here's a sample of what might have been on my JENSEN CYBERO 16Mb MP3 Player when I was in Highschool:

• Happy Hardcore - Paradise of Rave
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=di8LPAtQsuU&si=lTGnLNQOD9YHNB2N

• Benny Benassi - Cocaine vs. Ecstasy
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm7yBNCqlaU&si=oVxgDZJBZBU4A4S4

• P.J. Olsson - The Whistle Song
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=AqamYqT4784&si=yN8shSllgUMfreZR

• Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=j_2MZMDkyOg&si=ihfe5l900Jw2mDZK

• The Mars Volta - Roulette Dares
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=z26eM4Gr0cA&si=nRtSVNFdsAbNRrfl

• David Bowie - I'm Afraid of Americans
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=5UDkRpqO-b0&si=0QTiTdhHJqdTEDcv

@North 4 Mbps! Luxury!

@psf After I started working at Radio Shack, I replaced this JENSEN thing with a Zune 8, which I consider my first serious MP3 player and which I still prefer aesthetically to the iPod. It lasted me until I got my first "smartphone" (Motorola Q) and my phone acted as my primary music player ever since.

Ironically, I'm now looking at buying a serious dedicated MP3 player again.

(It has never been safe to hand me the aux)

My stepmom was a party DJ when I was growing up and I once, in middle school, convinced her to put on my newly acquired copy of DJ Krush 'The Message at the Depth' at a High School dance and I was never allowed to make requests after that.

@North "Fast download speed: 4 Mbps" - that would have been a lot!

Any chance of a teardown? Or too special?

@projectgus I'm thinking about it. If it comes apart as easy as I remember, I'll probably do it! I'm sure it's a single flimsy PCB inside with a blob on it, but it'll be fascinating to see.

@North Around the same time I spent my hard earned cash on an impossibly thin portable CD player with a pretty good MP3 navigation interface. It seemed like magic-level engineering at the time, and I'd love to actually know what tech was inside it now.

(Sadly I can't even remember the brand name any more...)

You want to lose the crowd at a rural Virginia high school in 2003? Interrupt their Top 40 with this:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3rUrCwIn2QM&si=goTDeVE6aPkUeUaJ

I did meet the first guy I ever saw wearing fishnets and painted nails at that event, though. He was a punk kid, I wanna say his name was Gabe? He told me the DJ Krush was sick as hell.

@projectgus That sounds cool as hell. They really did some impressive things with portable CD near the end of that tech tree. I had a pretty cheap portable CD player when I was a kid that I think my dad bought me to keep me away from his Walkman and even that thing had great anti-skip and was pretty easy on batteries.

@North vividly flashing back to a long-forgotten highschool volleyball class when the PE teacher said he'd be cool with people bringing their own music to play over the gym PA during class. immediately ran back to my locker to grab a mix CD i'd burned that week.

to his credit, i think we made it three or four cuts in before it was switched for something else. it would have been DJ Zinc or AK1200 or Dylan or Krust, probably. I for sure remember hearing Warhead 2000 ​

@dank Fuck yes Warhead 2000, that rules, hahahaha