Remember the Diamond Rio PMP300? It’s credited with being the very first portable MP3 player, released all the way back in 1998 (I say ‘credited’ because I visited an audio museum once which exhibited a Toshiba MP3 player from 1997). I recently rescued a pristine set of Rio artifacts from a recycle pile.

I wondered if I should scan the manual for posterity. However, a Google search indicates that a proper PDF (loaded with pleas to not illegally copy music) isn’t very difficult to come by. Here are the other items that came with the unit:

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Ah, more memories (of dialup internet): A tie-in with another Diamond product, this time a modem which claims to enable the user to download songs at up to 112 kilobits per second. I wonder if that was really possible. I remember that 56k modems were a stretch and 33.6k was the best that most users could hope for.

There is also a separate piece of paper that advises the buyer that the parallel port adapter might look a bit different than what is seen in the printed copy. Imagine the age of downloading to your MP3 player via parallel port while pulling down new songs via dialup internet.

The artifacts also included not one, but two CD-ROMs:

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One is a driver and software disc, so no big surprise there. The other has a selection of MP3 files for your shiny new MP3 player. I’m wondering if these should be proactively preserved. I was going to process the files’ metadata and publish it here, for the benefit of search engines. However, while metadata is present, the files don’t conform to any metadata format that FFmpeg/Libav recognize. The files mention Brava Software Inc. in their metadata sections. Still, individual filenames at the end of this post.

Leftovers:
A few other miscellaneous multimedia acquisitions:

I still want to study all of these old multimedia creation programs in depth some day. Theatrix Hollywood is a creative writing game, Wikipedia alleges (I’m a bit rigid with my exact definition of what constitutes a game). Here is an example movie output from this software. Meanwhile, the Mad Dog Multimedia CD-ROM apparently came packaged with a 56X CD-ROM drive (roughly the pinnacle of CD-ROM speeds). I found it has some version of Sonic Foundry’s ACID software, thus making good on the “applications” claim on the CD-ROM copy.

Diamond Rio MP3 Sampler
These are the names of the MP3 files found on the Diamond Rio MP3 sampler for the benefit of search engines.

13_days.mp3
albert_einstein_dreams.mp3
a_man_of_many_colours.mp3
anything_for_love.mp3
a_secret_place.mp3
bake_sale.mp3
bigger_than_the_both_of_us.mp3
boogie_beat.mp3
bring_it_on.mp3
buskersoundcheck_hippo.mp3
charm.mp3
chemical_disturbance.mp3
coastin.mp3
credit_is_due.mp3
dance_again.mp3
destiny.mp3
dig_a_little_deeper.mp3
diplomat6_bigmouthshut.mp3
dirty_littlemonster.mp3
dirty.mp3
drivin.mp3
Eric_Clapton_Last_Train.mp3
etude_in_c_sharp_minor_op_42_n.mp3
everybody_here.mp3
freedom_4_all.mp3
grandpas_advice.mp3
groove.mp3
heartland.mp3
he_loved_her_so.mp3
highway_to_hell.mp3
hit_the_ground_runnin.mp3
i_feel_fine_today.mp3
im_not_lost_im_exploring.mp3
into_the_void.mp3
its_alright.mp3
i_will_be_there.mp3
i_will_pass_this_way_again.mp3
juiceboxwilly_hepcat.mp3
just_an_illusion.mp3
keepin_time_by_the_river.mp3
king_of_the_brooklyn_delta.mp3
lovermilou_ringingbell.mp3
middle_aged_rock_and_rollers.mp3
midnight_high.mp3
mr_schwinn.mp3
my_brilliant_masterpiece.mp3
my_gallery.mp3
on_the_river_road.mp3
pouring_rain.mp3
prayer.mp3
rats_in_my_bedroom.mp3
razor_serpent_and_the_dub_mix.mp3
ruthbuzzy_pleasestophangin.mp3
secret_love.mp3
ships.mp3
silence_the_thunder.mp3
sleeping_beauty.mp3
slow_burn.mp3
standing_in_my_own_way.mp3
take_no_prisoners.mp3
takin_up_space.mp3
Taylor_Dayne_Unstoppable.mp3
the_laundromat_song.mp3
the_old_dun_cow.mp3
the_people_i_meet.mp3
trip_trigger_avenue.mp3
tru-luv.mp3
unfortunate_man.mp3
vertigo.mp3
when_she_runs.mp3
where_do_we_go_from_here.mp3
words_of_earnest.mp3