The large image: Youngsters and younger adults of the late 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 airplane, permitting you to the touch this piece of historical past. It’s a testomony to 1’s ardour and creativity, taking one thing outdated and giving it a brand new lease on life.
Winamp was launched for Home windows in 1997, simply as MP3s had been changing into mainstream. A number of the options that stood out had been Winamp’s distinctive interface with dynamic spectrum bars and the flexibility to alter skins (a.ok.a. themes). Let’s not overlook the signature start-up sound, which you’ll be able to hearken to right here. The longevity of Winamp’s recognition was minimize brief after its acquisition by AOL in 1999 and the explosion in recognition of Apple’s iPod and iTunes merchandise within the early 2000s.
Hobbyist Rodmg recreated Winamp’s feel and look as Linamp, a bodily media participant with design roots tracing again to Nineties audio packing containers. Powering the Linamp is a Raspberry Pi 4B with a 32GB SD card. It includes 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 an area 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 fashionable quality-of-life capabilities corresponding to Bluetooth and Spotify streaming assist sooner or later.
If this undertaking is past your talent stage, there are alternate options.
AudioWanderer lately confirmed off Raspinamp, a much less glamorous however useful undertaking for a Raspberry Pi-powered bodily Winamp-themed MP3 participant. If you wish to play with the supply code, it’s essential to wait till September 2024, when it is going to be open-source. I’m wanting ahead to working Winamp on my FreeBSD media system.
