If you're like us, you probably have fond memories of the iPod. While it was revolutionary, it wasn't even close to the first MP3 player on the scene.
These aren't iPods! These are weird old MP3 players!
Our buddy Dankpods flew all the way from Down Under to the Great White North.
Come on, what are you doing? To show us the weirdest and rarest MP3 players made by PC brands.
Is it coming out? We got Intel. We got Creative. We got Lexar. We got Dell.
iOmega? Is that a zip drive? Yeah, this is some weird stuff.
iOmega's dead, aren't they? Are they? Oh, I don't know.
A moment of silence.
Wait, isn't that the secret one that we shouldn't be showing? And a secret one that's from Linus' childhood.
I think, I could be wrong and Linus could get here and be like, I never owned that and I'll roll with that as well.
Any reactions, a good reaction. Wow, we're so prepared.
Let's dig in. This one, I swear there is no paper trail at all of this thing.
When I was looking into this, there's one JPEG and it's just this part heavily cropped.
If you try and search up Lexar 128 megabyte, it will show Lexar 128 Gigabyte things and then that's it.
Like, there's nearly no information at all. What are we looking at? This is a MP3 player, right?
Oh, baby, this is back when megabytes meant something.
Inflation's gotten everything. So 128 megabytes, carry music wherever you go.
Everywhere. And data wherever you go. Maybe, yes.
And I hate that the price got scratched off. Someone was very ashamed about what this costs back in the day.
Because I remember my first flash drive was 32 megabytes and it cost a fortune.
I believe this is either late 90s or very, very early thousands.
We're going to have to find some paperwork in there to see what it actually, what it was actually made.
Yeah, Lexar, they're still going, aren't they? They've been through a couple of hands at this point.
They were micron actually at one point for memory SD cards.
We know what happened with micron. Can you believe this is like 20 something years old?
Pushin' 30 and everyone said no. Do you know what's crazy to me?
Is this storage comparison on the back here? Two hours of music for 128 megabytes.
That's 88 floppy disks? But I bet you that's like 64 kilobit, like...
MP3's got a bad rap from these days because I've got some of these that are like used
and they've still got slipknot on them from 1999. They sound horrible.
Like early MP3 compression was garbage. And I bet you to get that many hours of music on 128 megs,
it was just... It was probably 128 kilobit.
That's what the standard was for a lot of stuff. Some of the lower quality stuff was 96,
but yeah, you hear the cymbal ring and it's...
Easy to use one button navigation, which has never been true.
Having one button is not easy navigation. Keep believe no one copied this.
After this no one replicated. Absolutely not. Everyone knocked off the iPod.
But who wouldn't want the eggnipple interface? Do we know it the year?
macOS 9 or above, Windows Millennium 2000 XP. That to me sounds...
So it's at least... Turn of the century. Yep. For context, the iPod came out in 2001.
The very first one. The way I found this was by searching MP3
and scrolling for six hours. And then it appeared. I wasn't actually looking for this.
Breathe the air, you're wasting it. Actually, no, don't do that.
I hope it's super greasy. How's it feel? It's in good condition. It's not like rubber, right?
No. Still got the protective bit over the screen too. My brand new knife.
You can do a peel. A single AAA. It's not for retail trade.
I don't know if there's an expiry on it. It doesn't look like it's leaked. No, it looks like it's in pretty good condition.
So it's better than new Energizer batteries. You want to test it? Yes.
0.6 volts. Hey. What's it meant to be? 1.3, I think.
1.2. But it's still something hiding in there.
Before we get into the documentation, we got the back case made in China.
Wow. We got a clippable lanyard, a USB adapter.
That'd be USB 1.1. Is this a... Why is it...
Oh! It's got a USB on it. So this is if you have to put it into like a recessed port.
And we got a pair of headphones. Dirty birds. Do you like treble?
Dude, I love it. You love those. Why is the end all dirty?
It looks like a chocolate bun. I don't know. Cause I thought maybe it'd be like rubber reversion, but it's not.
I think it was from the battery leaking on it. Oh, yeah, put it in. That one's not going to work. No, I put it in.
You can try it. Don't listen to him. Do it, do it.
We can grab a... Yeah, let's go get a real AAA. What's this?
That's the headphone jack? That's where the headphone goes in.
It's only goes on one way. It only goes on.
Oh my goodness. I tried to put it on. I hope it's got music on it.
It turns on. No files. Okay, no, there is no music on it.
Well, it's got a backlight. Yeah, it does have a backlight. It's like the indiglo watches.
Look, there's some music notes. How many settings you got? Normal.
Rock. Jazz. Classical.
Pop. Boom. That is your V.
Leave it on boom. We want boom, baby. Backlight.
Condor. The menu is everything. It's not, there's no like setting submenu.
We'll put music on it in a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're gonna get these loaded up. I wanna see the Intel one now.
Get away from me. This genuinely is one of my pride and joys of my nugget hood.
This is the one I always wanted to bring. I didn't even know they tried.
And 1999, they heaved this thing out. They really cared.
Like every big PC company got in way before Apple
and none of them had it hit at all. If it wasn't an iPod, no one bought it.
The Intel Pocket Concert. This one's got 128 megs too, but does four hours.
It's also got FM radio? That's sick.
Durable aluminum. Very low distortion. I'm sorry, what'd you call it?
It's spelled that, okay? I don't know how to tell you this. I'm pretty sure it's aluminium though.
Bro, are you Intel? This is full of stuff, this is loaded.
This is a big box. Like also look at the like. Poof.
Poof. It's like exploding at you.
Well, they had to. Cause this is how you knew about it. It was on a store shelf.
Wow. She looks kind of scary. She's scaring the academy.
11 megawatt high-put audio amplifier with a total harmonic distortion plus N.
I don't know, what's that? Of 0.04%.
And look at this man, he's gone for a run. Hopefully it comes with these headphones.
Cause they look- All the wrapper on the back? They look something else.
No, it's not as good. Look, there's just- Oh!
We got a disc. Oh, it's sealed in its own.
Okay. So much packaging. Look at the size of this manual.
No one showed the upgrade key. Someone's going to take that and I won't be able to upgrade.
Should we call Intel customer support? I think we need the software, the Intel audio manager.
And it's telling us how to put in a CD-ROM. Which I guess was a big deal in 1999.
Operating vehicles do not use your player and headphones while operating a motorized vehicle.
Or riding a bicycle. Now that's what people do. That was going to say.
With noise canceling now. Also look at this.
Wait a minute. So the crappy Lexar, we got an actual energizer.
And Intel was just putting in generic rubbish batches. How do you think they could afford this?
That card stock, huh? Yeah. And also the security tape. Wow, so like genuinely, this is a brand stinking new.
Oh no, look at all the foam from the headphones coming off. Like if you handle those, it's going to go-
Just to degree. See, I'm not going to breathe this one in. Because this actually is like-
This is gross actually. This is an issue. Okay, we have-
What is that? We have this. Belt clip. Oh!
It actually feels pretty good. It is metal. It is aluminum.
Aluminum. Aluminum. Oh, it burned a hole in the paper.
This sweaty greasy spot. That's acid etched onto the disc.
If you're only using 150 megs, you're only going like that far.
Could be full of free music. And it's going to put all that schmutz all over the headphones.
This is a nice cable though. Feel that? It's a nice cable. I know a place you can get nicer ones.
Well, not right now. They're awesome. But LTTstore.com, eventually.
They're so good, you can't get them. Dude, it comes with a preloaded digital audio file
entitled Guided Tour. We need to hear that. We have to hear that.
We have to listen to that. Digital- Yop! Firmware version 1.0.
It's a USB composite device. And then it went blank. This is meant to be a baffling experience.
CD-ROM! No, you missed it! Setup D! Here we go.
Whoa! If we show this on screen, someone will figure out what that says.
Good. We'll put it in the comments below. Boost engagement. Would you like to receive free personalized music?
Yes, recommended. Yeah, yeah, put this on the internet. I hate that there's no progress bar,
even though most progress bars are a lie. We went past the progress bars.
The progress bar finished, and now we gotta please wait. Whoa!
Oh, God! 60 Second Studio Tour! Oh!
Dot MP3. Oh! Put it in.
Okay. Success! Yes, Intel Audio Manager.
First name. Can we both add the same ID? Postal code.
5000. Okay, that's good. Yes!
Can we just put the ox cable in it? Welcome to the Intel Pocket Concert.
Oh! I can studio tour. There you go. We've got hours of mind-blowing audio.
What's happening with the doors? What was it like? But this is the minute tour.
Just a few highs and lows over a really big sound.
What is with the... Stop! Keep the door shut! We're filming in here!
And we thought brain rot is a new thing. Thanks to the Intel Pocket Concert!
Woo! Who kept opening and closing the door?
What was with the door? There's a little knob on the left side of the player.
Bump it up one click from the circle to the dash. That turns it on.
Play, which you're doing already. I know. Click the big play button on the face of the...
He's so far away. Watch out.
Trouble with poets. There could be content match issues with this.
High wire by the Clarks something. This seems like a genuinely good product.
Yeah, it's got good reviews. This, I'd less enthusiastic about it,
but maybe maybe our next one will be genuinely good too. This one's fun because it looks heavily used.
It looks like it's been thrashed through oblivion. It's not. This baby is brand new.
No, no, I'm getting to that.
Just something to note about old MP3 players. Everyone bought iPods.
Literally it was like 80% market share. It was like the Beatles. Never to be done again.
But everyone tried to compete with it. And it's like competing with like your little brother
or something who's like really famous. Someone looked at this for years,
looked inside and went, oh, that's no good.
And then they wrote iPod on it and chucked it in the shell. Like they can't escape the association.
It's like a call in every game console on Nintendo. Well, I was going to say this.
Reminds me of when Microsoft paid the NFL. A ton of money to use Microsoft services.
And they kept calling it the iPad. They're just assessing the play on the iPad. Yeah, this one's great.
This is an iPod mini clone, essentially. Except for the interface.
The pocket DJ. But for like 20 years, people have opened this box,
looked in it and went, I don't want that. Oh, feel the head.
Oh, you know, actually that feels pretty good. Oh, oh, stickiness.
Yeah, it's got the rubberized ends on it. I think this is 2004.
This is like iPod mini days. And man, pirating was out of control.
Metallica was on the phone with Dell like, tell them not to steal, tell them not to steal.
This has Microsoft plays for sure certification.
Five Gigabyte. Holy smokes. This is huge. And look, the birth of mini USB.
That's actually a nice cable. If it wasn't an absolutely obsolete standard.
It feels nice in the hand. It looks decent. Got Phillips screws in it.
Should I get my LTT precision screwdriver from LTTstore.com and bust that out?
Dude, you're such a shill and I love it. We are plugged in.
Whoa! There's light. Ticking a while to start.
Maybe the, the drive is all blocked up. It's never.
It's not, I don't feel it moving. That's not good because we should.
I hear it. It is moving. I hear it. Honestly, it would have booted by now. How do you know?
Because I have a lot of these old MP3 players.
It should have worked already. Get round of applause for the Dell logo, everybody.
That's it. I'm opening up. Give it. Look, you guys sent me a dank pods one.
Look at this and you put dank pods on it and it's green. It's like no one wants you to get in this thing.
Okay. We've lost some plastic. Wow. Yeah. That's the absolutely tiny little micro drives.
The takeaway, please don't steal music. All right. We got two more.
This is the one I'm the most excited about and the inspiration really for bringing this here.
Cause this is some proper wacky PC stuff.
Freakin hip zip. These are click drives, I believe they're cold.
It was like spinning magnetic meteors last gasp
at fighting off solid state USB drives.
And they're horrifically unreliable. Most people who've handled them, they just don't work.
But 80 megabytes each. 80 megabytes. Huge.
That's like a 10th of a CD. And infinitely times more fragile.
Like these are so slim. And like, I mean, no one bought this.
Can you believe that? No one bought this at all. Oh, you got to show the techie stuff.
Cause this is a tech channel. System requirements. System requirements.
The techie stuff you need to know. Eight comes with two discs, which is very...
Oh, they're 40 megabyte. That's why it's 80 megabytes included. Those checks.
They were lying. They're 40 megs each, not 80. It also doubles as an external 40 megabyte pocket zip drive.
This thing's such a nugget. This one comes with a digital audio player carrying case.
You were breaking it. Crack it open.
Nothing. One.
Cable. A plug that doesn't work in my country.
Thanks for purchasing this Omega product. There is my chippy.
It sounds... Oh, and tiny little cassettes. These are so fragile.
This is not good. Enhance.
Whoa, we got the sporty ears. What are they called?
Labtech? They've just stuffed it with non biodegradable everything.
It's like, don't want that to collapse. Hang on, someone's ripped into this.
But it was sealed. I cut it open. It was in plastic. Who would want this?
Now that's how it's meant to feel. Considering it has no media in it currently,
feel the weight of it. That's chunky. Stop!
Comes with two discs, hatefully. Omega wear. Omega wear.
Yo, we got another key for a music match jukebox. Oh, because we lost the first one.
People stole it. Now that takes me back. The old translucent cable.
Oh, and we have another proprietary end dingle on it. So it charges via a like barrel connector.
Yep, because USB couldn't do it. Early USB couldn't charge first device.
It's why the first iPod used firewire.
Oh, Omega. It's got a little, it's got a throbber.
Insert a disc. Do it! Which way does it go?
Yes, yes. Okay. Tell me what happened.
It turned off way. This is so common for most of these ancient nuggets
is that they don't do anything. Have you noticed all of these are silver and blue?
That was the late 90s, early thousands. Updating the registry.
Oh my God. Your kernel has been compromised. Hacked, hacked.
One or nothing, there's songs on this. Get our overbuilt speaker in here.
But look at where the fricking headphone jack comes up.
They like forgot, they like put all the other ports and they're like, oh, shh.
Hey! These work?
This is playing off of spinning garbage. Well, now you've done it.
Oh dear. Did it just die just then? Still, the audio's not outputting.
Yeah, these are known to be unreliable, can you believe? I think she's dead, bud.
I don't know, I'm still using it. Adam, Adam, stop.
Just stop it. Get some help. Do you wanna try and plug it in and see if it detects?
Yeah? Yeah, it says it's connected there, it doesn't say it's connected up here. The hip zip's no more.
We heard a song on it. That's pretty epic. Oh, you gotta have it connected when you reboot?
Oh! Oh! Oh!
It's there! It's there! Congratulations!
Used, 16.7 megs. That's rough, if there's four songs in here.
It is actually still alive. Do you think the other CD has other stuff on it? That's CD.
Disc life status, 100%. Subscribe my son, 16, a bit fat.
In fact, you gotta restart the whole computer and have it plugged in.
There's my chippy. Oh, yeah, no, it just, it recognizes that there's nothing there now.
If this is hot swappable, that would be amazing. It's done it. It's hot swappable.
We've got the same song. It's exactly the same. The Swingerillers and Dick Swab.
Excuse me? They give you the same stuff on both discs
because maybe they're guessing one of these is gonna brick in post.
Oh!
Dick Swab. Wow, it still works.
Good for it. That was awesome. I love the hip set, okay?
Both of these, we got a good 30 seconds at each of these before they compound into oblivion.
I like how nearly everything is broken immediately.
Straight away. I swear I've heard Linus bring up that he had one of these as a kid.
Maybe I've just dreamt that and made it up and it's just absolutely not true,
but I swear he's mentioned this. And this was the best music dingus
that you could get at the time. It's like six gigs and it's got a butt.
Look at that dumper on it. Yeah, that's chunky.
Oh, Linus is here. Did I come in a little faster?
That was great. That was a good segue. So we've been looking at all of these whack
little MP3 players. That one totally worked. That one totally lasted for longer than 20 seconds.
You seen these? Whoa, that's sick.
It's basically the guts of a floppy disc. The last gasp of spinning magnetic media
versus flash drives and whatnot. I love it. It's yours.
Firewire and everything. Yeah, I don't want any more. So that's yours.
You can have it, mate. Thank you. And you've got something else, right?
Yeah, well, I mean, you've hidden it. You've taken it away.
Just close your eyes. So he assures me that this is a gem from your childhood.
I don't know. Is it an RCA lira? I've got one of them, but no. Did you have one of these?
Oh, God. I didn't, but kids with more money than me did.
These were so expensive. Yes, they were. And this is brand new inbox and it's yours.
You can have it. Yeah, where are those kids with more money now, huh? How did you get this?
Well, the trick is no one wants them. Right. And so all of these were maybe 10, 20 bucks each
about six, seven years ago when I first found these. They were just being dumped on mass.
And sure enough, I get it and open it and it's still brand new in it.
Dude, it supports EAX. Yes. Six gigs.
Like back when this thing came out, that was an ungodly amount of music storage.
Eight megs of DRAM buffer. Wow, that's an investment that paid off.
Wait, get that out of there. This guy's got RAM. Some things have aged well.
Some things not so well. Six gig hard drive, a hundred hours.
Okay, that's pretty good. Four hours of battery life on four nickel metal hydride batteries.
Yeah. You only need a hundred batteries to listen to all of your music. You're right.
It's totally new. At least I hope so. I've made sure not to pick through it.
No, it's brand new. This tape has never been opened. 15 watts.
Whoa. You can go with our other ones.
Yeah, don't put them on your head. You will never get all this bits out of your ears. Oh, dude.
Go play to tip it in. Is there like foam actually like holding up? Oh wow, these are really uncomfortable.
No, come on. I can't get my ear to unfold.
There we go. I gotta pull it through there. Hey, butt, butt.
Just like the commercials. It's gonna hurt you. He's gonna hurt us.
This thing ain't real good though. That's a heckin' USB cable.
Yeah, I could make a better one. True spent cables. So, lttstore.com.
Can you have them be in stock? You visit us once a year.
I paid my own way. You walk up and you're just like, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.
Whoa, it's got a carrying case. No, I think this is a CD wallet. It's gotta be.
No. I mean, this is when having a CD player was normal.
Not only that, but I would imagine part of the reason that they would go with a form factor like this
was that like my snowboarding jacket, for instance,
I noticed it had been a while since I upgraded because I went to stash my gloves somewhere
and I went, oh, I have a discman pocket. Does it have like a headphone out?
Yeah, that's like. Whoa, dude. Back when they used to put durable ports on things.
Got that big chunky B, if you know what I'm saying. Man, this thing is full of inputs.
You weren't kidding. Volume control over here, headphone jack.
And then you've got two line outs and a line in.
So you could use it as like a desktop DAC? It seems like that's an idea.
Or a something. Is this an IR receiver?
Yeah. So if you had an older tape deck,
or if you had an amplifier, you could literally hook this thing up
and then you'd have a remote interface to play MP3s
on your home stereo setup. I didn't think of that. I didn't.
Yeah, well, you're not as old as me. I'm 36 now. Yeah, that's not as old as me.
Oh, okay. Well, you're aging wonderfully then. It's all the infant blood that I consume.
And other things that won't make the cut. It comes with two sets of batteries.
That's eight hours of listening. Wow. It is too.
I mean, we've got to try it, right? Yeah. I can't believe creative still exists.
What do they even make now? I have a Sound Blaster card in my PC. I bet you bought it years and years and years ago.
Months ago. Really? You just bought a sound card? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I realize who I'm talking to. So this is gonna maybe come across a little bit.
You are aware of USB DACs, right? Yeah.
Yeah, okay. PCIe is cool. And you have to rip your PC apart to get in there?
It's fun. Okay. Install all of it. It's not my computer.
Blow it up. Just hit okay. I don't want the jukebox tutorial. You're gonna need to sync this or something.
Register now to enjoy a host of benefits. Quick, do it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Use only creative nickel metal hydride batteries.
No.
Yeah, this dude loves 3D. What are you guys talking? You know, these are not sound isolating at all.
Crap. What about 3D? 3D music videos.
Oh yeah, what was your first music play? My first music player was a Discman,
obviously, because I'm older than you, but my first, I also had a Discman.
My first MP3 player though was actually an RCA Lyra.
And I sprung for the 64 megabyte model
because the 16 one was like comically small.
It existed only so that they could say it started at $99
or whatever the pricing was. You wanted the, at least the 32,
but you wanted the 64 megabyte model. And I'm not misspeaking.
Megabytes, 15 songs. But hey, that was an album.
And it didn't skip. It didn't skip. It didn't skip. I remember this actually sounding really good.
It's meant to be like beyond CD quality sort of thing. Yeah, do you remember using these?
No. Whoa, that's actually 3D rendered there.
It's a tutorial. I'm turning this beast on. But you're not using the official creative batsman.
I'm sorry, it's yours, it's yours. Wait, they want you to charge the batteries in the device.
Oh, it's the charger as well. Before first use, charge the batteries continuously
for 12 hours, ensure the unit is powered off during the first charge.
But I've seen devices before that just will not turn on
unless they've been plugged in. It's more of a new paradigm, but.
Uh-oh. Where's yours? So we can just fire one up and have it work.
So we can actually look at it. Nice gift, huh? That's yours. Okay, hold on, hold on.
Maybe I just, maybe I put these in wrong. Maybe I put them in wrong. I did.
I did. No way. That's embarrassing. Hate for that to be in a video.
No, I'm not even embarrassed. Okay, look at this.
Okay, which side's negative? Oh no, I see what's happened. Okay.
Xbox controllers. They flip, but the springy bit doesn't.
That's. That's maniacal. I've never seen a spring not be the negative terminal.
Okay, no, it's gotta be. This is actually devastating.
I was really pumped about this being brand. Cause like, this would actually be fun to have on the desk
and it actually uses a music player cause they sound good and it lives on a desk
and it's fucked. You found the other one, it's dead too.
We must be doing something wrong. Yeah, that's it. I remember it being annoying to get going.
You hold the play button for two seconds. Held it for four seconds.
Did you put the creative batteries in here now? I did. Let's plug it in.
Let's see if the computer detects it. This is everything that's included on it.
You get several albums of classical music.
Probably cause it's free license and no one's copyrighting it anymore.
And lots of jazz music. So maybe it was just all the stock music on it.
Several contemporary songs. Ray Gunn, isn't that the Australian breakdowns it?
You get the entirety of Frankenstein on audio book.
No, no, don't. It's copyright or something. Huh. One last thing I want to try.
Oh, hey, I have a gift for you too actually. This is a lot more expensive than it looks.
This protects you from the 5G. I can feel my DNA being cured with every second.
Yeah. This is excellent. If you just want to like ironically put that
on your stuff for a little bit, I guarantee you that people will notice
and they'll comment. Cause this is like the brand name one. Are they comments that I want?
I don't know, they'll maybe be funny. Well, thanks. You're welcome.
One inanimate object to another. So.
Remember this thing you didn't have in your childhood? You still don't have it now.
That's not a conclusion to a video. I don't know what is. What's been an honor to waste your time?
Thanks, Ray. Well, thanks for protecting me.
You're welcome. I feel better with every second it passes. And thanks to you for watching this video.
If you enjoyed this video, why don't you check out the last time Dank Pots was here and we looked at audio snake oil.
Yeah. Yeah. The difference was that stuff didn't do anything.
Hey.