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My first portable was a 'k-mart special' generic fm stereo. It had terrible sound, but a good tuner. It lasted for about 1 year, when the headphone jack broke. My second was a Sanyo, but I soon had the same broken headphone jack that my first portable had.. I can't remember the brand of my third portable; it was either a GPX or an off-brand GPX. It used a 9 volt battery and had around 30 mW output per channel. Naturally the batteries would only last 4-6 hours. I bought an 6 AA battery holder that had a 9 volt plug in, and taped it to the radio. It more than doubled the weight of the portable, but the battery life went up to 5 days. I literally lived with that radio on, and sometimes slept with it,too. Then I lost it in a snow drift. We found it in the spring thaw; it no longer worked... My next portable was a GE that could fit into a shirt pocket; it was severely under-powered at around 20mW. But it was cheap and the 2 AA batteries lasted for a week or more, so I kept it for several years. This was around the time I was old enough to drive, and we had a stereo in our car... The GPX GPX is/was a 'made in china' brand that didn't cost much for some good sound. I got this for christmas, and I was surprised at the 50 milliwatts (mW) per channel sound. Unfortunately, the three AA batteries didn't last long. So I went to Radio Shack and bought a 3 'D cell' battery holder and 3 D batteries. I didn't have to buy alkaline batteries, the 'heavy duty' type was good for nearly 1 month, for around $1.50 . Towards the end of the month the radio would sound pretty bad, as the batteries depleted their energy. 
A 'heavily used' early FM/AM portable from GPX. Very dirty from being in storage. So my next 'project' was to find a way to attach the battery pack to the radio... The GPX II, 'My Frankenstein' 
Bought another of the same radio (for about $12.00) but was disappointed that the later models only put out 20 mW per channel.. After nearly 20 years in storage, it shows some rust. Nobody ever saw the back side. I 'found' this piece of scrap metal on a job site and took it home. It just looked right, but when I got it home the metal piece was about 1/2 an inch too wide. And too short. I bent it, using my bare hands, a crescent wrench, and a hammer (on the cement sidewalk). Crude yet effective. I didn't have to drill any holes, as this piece was already full of holes. I used the 'guts' from the older GPX which had a higher output, and put them into the newer housing. What you see is around 5 years worth of creativity and innovation. It started with a heavier piece of metal for the belt 'clip' , yet keeping the radio on my belt was still a problem. So I used a heavy piece of twine to connect another clip, with a knotted end of the twine going through the battery housing and 'compartment' . The radio could now fall from my belt clip, yet it would still be attached to a belt loop on my jeans/shorts by the twine . It would dangle, and it was heavy. I should add that I wore this radio while riding my bicycle in city traffic, where you did not want to have problems with a radio... My nephew called it the 'frankenstein' radio. In that condition, my main problem was that the headphones kept coming unplugged. And given the 'vulnerable nature' of headphone plugs in general, I devised my own plugs. Using an old pair of headphones, I cut away the plastic to reach the core of the plug. I removed the old wires with a soldering iron. I had found an old cord from an ancient IBM dictation machine; it was coiled and had 8 or 10 wires inside. I figured that if one wire went bad, I could just use one of the others...The wire was heavy duty; it was hard to get solder to stick to it. The effect of the coiled cable was like a bungee cord; if I dropped the radio it would bounce up and down. Imagine the headphone wire I used was heavier than the (bare) radio itself. I soldered the wires onto the plug , and I wrapped the joints with 2 feet of common sewing thread. Then I dripped candle wax over them, for water-proofing.At first I used black electrical tape as the covering, then later I found a plastic cap that fit my project perfectly. I used a piece of metal that held a capacitor to the main board of an old television as the 'hook' that covered and held the headphone plug firmly into place. It only required 2 bolts to hold it in place; one on top and one in back near the bottom. But with all the weight, it would still unplug just enough to lose audio. So I had to add straps to the back of the radio housing to hold the headphone cable firmly in place. After all this, I revised my twine to loop around the sturdy headphone hook, and never dropped the radio. If I had, it would have shattered. 
Internally, I covered the volume and tuner dial with 4 mil clear plastic, to keep out dust and/or rain. I also clipped the am/fm knob, since I never used AM it was just an opening for dirt or water to get in. I removed the green 'power' LED, since it just drained power. And finally, I bent the red stereo LED in to illuminate the dial. The Toshiba KT 4026 
Found this in a thrift shop; actually it is parts from 2 units to make 1 good radio. The unit had the standard 20 mW per channel, but I enjoyed having my tapes on the daily ride. The Seiko PHX-51CDX 
My first CD player was this Seiko Instruments PHX-51CDX, which had an AC power jack and line outs in the back. I had a great collection of vinyl LPs and tapes and I didn't waste my money buying CDs. Then I found this portable in a pawn shop for $7.50 , and couldn't resist. I connected it to my home stereo, and rarely took it out of the house until I bought a 'real' CD player. This thing eats batteries; it uses 6 AAs and they will go dead after 1 hour, or about 1 CDs worth of music. So I went to Radio Shack and bought a 4 D cell battery holder for portable use. I made the battery holder clip onto my belt, and ran a wire to the player, which I hung around my neck. It was best there, because my clothing (shirt) would hold the Seiko in place against my body. The DBBS is really a great feature; I would use this today, if only it played CDRs. The irock model 530 
My first mp3 player the iRock model 530 (64MB),features a simple display and controls. Then one day I realized how 'convenient' it would be to have all my music on my computer. This would solve the 'wait' when changing CDs , and I set out to digitize my music collection. A few years later I bought a new bike at Walmart, and when I had a weekend off I would go for a bicycle ride. Weather permitting. I decided to buy an mp3 player on eBay. But I took a few days to research the different brands, the features they offered and most importantly the output power. I didn't want an Apple for two reasons: one, the low output power, and two, the popularity of the brand just drove up the prices. All I wanted was a 'cheap' mp3 player to see if I would enjoy the tiny portable music player. I settled for an irock, but I seriously wondered how anything could work off of 1 AAA battery. The irock 530 was a pleasant surprise; peoples main complaints were the SmartMedia ezpansion slot and the simple display. By now I was making 'Mix CDs' so my priority was for something that would hold 80 minutes of music. I didn't need titles on the display to tell me what song I was listening to. The irocks do have a good sound output, even though the specs say output is 5mW. It also has a SmartMedia (SMC) slot to upgrade the memory, but I found that many people had problems getting the player to switch between the system and expansion memory. If you put a card in, the player didn't show the music on the system memory, only what was on the expansion card . So you had to take the card out for those songs. The irock got me interested, but the SMC problem was not fixable, and since my collection of mp3s was all 256KBs bitrate, it just didn't hold enough music for a 3-4 hour bike ride. As an added bonus, the irock software CD featured the Musicmatch media player, which I found to be easier to use than either Windows Media Player or Real Player. The Creative Muvo Nomad 
My second mp3 player, the Creative Muvo Nomad has 128MB of storage. The Creative Muvo V 100 
My latest mp3 player, the Creative Muvo V 100. I promised myself that this would be my last mp3 player...ever. These are very nice, I just wished it had a clip. But it fits into a shirt pocket , and you can also just use it as a 1GB USB stick if you wanted to. The headphones were junk, but I had given up on earbuds and bought a pair of Panasonic 'clip-ons' after getting the Nomad. And I have some Sony 'over-the-ears' headphones for around the house. The ability to program the EQ is great, but if I recall correctly the player just doesn't handle cyrillic text. I can live with english. Like any mp3 portable, it just isn't loud enough. what? huh ? You say something ??? On second thought, keep it turned down. Close |