The massive image: Youngsters and younger adults of the late Nineteen Nineties will bear in mind Winamp because the de facto music participant on their Home windows PCs. If tinkering with electronics and fabrication is your jam, give Linamp a glance. It brings Winamp to the bodily aircraft, permitting you to the touch this piece of historical past. It’s a testomony to at least one’s ardour and creativity, taking one thing previous and giving it a brand new lease on life.
Winamp was launched for Home windows in 1997, simply as MP3s have been changing into mainstream. Among the options that stood out have been Winamp’s distinctive interface with dynamic spectrum bars and the power to vary skins (a.ok.a. themes). Let’s not overlook the signature start-up sound, which you’ll be able to take heed to right here. The longevity of Winamp’s reputation was lower brief after its acquisition by AOL in 1999 and the explosion in reputation of Apple’s iPod and iTunes merchandise within the early 2000s.
Hobbyist Rodmg recreated Winamp’s appear and feel as Linamp, a bodily media participant with design roots tracing again to Nineteen Nineties audio bins. Powering the Linamp is a Raspberry Pi 4B with a 32GB SD card. It incorporates a 7.9-inch touchscreen, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, two USB ports (Kind-A and Kind-C), and an ethernet port. Rodmg used PCBWay to machine the outer 1mm aluminum shell and 3D-printed the face plate, paying homage to Winamp’s default pores and skin.
Additionally see: What Ever Occurred to Winamp?
Linamp can play music from a neighborhood SD card or a linked CD participant for retro-loving music-goers. The supported digital codecs embody MP3, MP4, and FLAC. Rodmg has expressed curiosity in bringing trendy quality-of-life capabilities similar to Bluetooth and Spotify streaming help sooner or later.
If this venture is past your talent degree, there are alternate options.
AudioWanderer not too long ago confirmed off Raspinamp, a much less glamorous however purposeful venture for a Raspberry Pi-powered bodily Winamp-themed MP3 participant. If you wish to play with the supply code, you need to wait till September 2024, when it is going to be open-source. I’m wanting ahead to operating Winamp on my FreeBSD media system.
