The first MP3 player celebrates its 10th birthday

Odds are, you take your iPod or Zune for granted. You probably don't think about the crazy technological advancements we've made, but take a ten-year look back at the world's first MP3 player -- the MPMan F10 -- and you'll get a sense of just how far we've come. Manufactured by Korea's Saehan Information Systems, the device was launched in March of 1998 at CeBIT, and went on sale in the Summer through Eiger Labs for $250. The player featured 32MB of flash memory (which could be upgraded to 64MB via mail-in scheme), connected to PCs via parallel port, and had a miniscule LCD for playback info -- but it laid the groundwork for the tech we have today. Following the MPMan's release, Rio unleashed its PMP300, which received a warmer reception and all-but eclipsed the F10's status as "first" amongst players, likely due to the company's well-known (and groundbreaking) legal battle against the RIAA. Still, first is first, so help keep the MPMan's rich history alive, and celebrate its ten-year anniversary this month with campfire songs and story-telling. Check out the archived read link of the original Eiger Labs site for a wild and wacky trip through time.

[Via Register Hardware]

[Brodie @ Mar 11th 2008 10:16AM]

First... does it blend? Will it play Doom? iPhone rip off...

Happy 10th MP3 player!

[emailtabs @ Mar 11th 2008 10:22AM]

I for one....

Crisys.....

Happy birthday to you!, happy birthday to you!, happy birthday dear MPmanF10!, happy birthday to yoooou! Whoooooooo! yeah! Wooohooooo!....

32 megs = dancing "All night long!"..........Lets get our cronk on!

[fred @ Mar 11th 2008 10:29AM]

32 megs?

Less space than a Nomad?

Lame.

[fanman @ Mar 11th 2008 11:47AM]

Ironic that the name is also bordering on the walkman knockoff.

[Raheem @ Mar 11th 2008 10:22AM]

The first MP3 player I remember was the Diamond Rio. :P

[LC @ Mar 11th 2008 10:25AM]

Yeah, that was mine too. I loved that thing.

[OneLove @ Mar 11th 2008 11:08AM]

I ipod was the first mp3 player. lol.

[Aron Trimble @ Mar 11th 2008 12:03PM]

PMP300 FTW!!

I remember getting like 10 songs on that beast and feeling like I was the SHIT!

I later got a Rio Volt mp3 cd player which boggled my mind with how much music I could carry on ONE CD!

[wunch @ Mar 12th 2008 12:47AM]

I still have my Rio Volt MP3 player in my drawer-o-discarded-gadgets. That thing was horrid and awesome at the same time. I think it had the worst battery life of anything I've ever owned.

[Wyze @ Mar 11th 2008 10:24AM]

Respects....

[julz007 @ Mar 11th 2008 10:25AM]

i remember when i was much younger looking through the argos catalogue at the mini disk players (they were all the rage back in the day - what an awesome thing they were too!), and there were these 'mp3 players' on one page which i thought were rubbish and a pointless thing as at the time they had about 128mb memory and could only store a handful of songs

i didnt imagine they would make this kind of impact :)

[fred @ Mar 11th 2008 10:45AM]

I swore by my 2 Minidisc players. I still come across them when digging through my basement, and still find them to be incredible devices.

The whole MP3 thing back then was as wild as it is today. MP3s took 20 minutes to download over dial-up, The quality was terrible, MP3.com was just stacked full of bootleg music, and you couldn't burn them to CDs because a blank CD cost you $20.00!

You kids just dont know how good you've got it!

[shaun @ Mar 11th 2008 11:19AM]

woooo argos! the little book of dreams!

[Mike @ Mar 11th 2008 12:04PM]

I remember when all my friends had minidisks and I got a 9gb Nomad Jukebox...they were like....

"omg ur teh winz"

or something like that :P

[matt @ Mar 11th 2008 10:26AM]

Eiger MPMan was my first MP3 player, junior or senior year of college. Parallel port, 16mb... Worked a treat, until it got stolen out of my truck.

Was it that long ago?

[Carmelo Lisciotto @ Mar 11th 2008 10:27AM]

I really love it!

Carmelo Lisciotto
www.carmelolisciotto.com

[ScOObyDoo @ Mar 11th 2008 11:00AM]

Take your shitty spam elsewhere:

http://jillium.nfshost.com/censored.htm

[Matt @ Mar 11th 2008 10:28AM]

Err, 32mb. The upgrade was to 64mb. Dur. It was a long time ago.

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Mar 11th 2008 4:36PM]

Uh, NOWAI!

[Longhorn @ Mar 11th 2008 10:28AM]

Hey! Proud to be a former owner of one of those.

Shame Saehan didn't hold onto those patents... Real shame.
I still remember going to Yongsan Elec Market to pick up a CASSETTE player and I saw one of these... I was going nuts. Good times.

[kev @ Mar 11th 2008 10:36AM]

Rio 500. That thing was a brick. Dropped it many-a-time and it kept on chugging. People dropped it from great heights and that didn't faze it either. Also, the SmartMedia! I found my 128MB SmartMedia card...it's about the size of 4 SD cards put together...good times.

[Newman @ Mar 11th 2008 10:36AM]

Mine was a Diamond Rio 64MB my friend sold me for 20 bucks. Ah, great times they were, cruising around in my off-white '89 'Stang jamming some Metallica (thanks, Napster!) over the tape-deck adapter. Meeeemories...

[eX @ Mar 11th 2008 1:51PM]

Indeed, so were the days! I had a CyberComp MPGenie back in early 2000. It had 64megs onboard and I got a 64 or 128 meg smart media card for it (used to connect via parallel port set to ECP). People were so amazed to see it back then, they thought it was a radio and it wasn't. Teachers wouldn't believe it was a music player and though it was a cheating device since it had a graphic lcd display. Was a one loud bastart considering it only used one AA battery. So yeah, today we take all this stuff for granted.

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Mar 11th 2008 4:42PM]

Mine was a Rio Volt SP90 MP3/CD player. Then the Riot Riot 20GB (Karma, iPod later), trumping everyone else around me in terms of HD space. But, what really got me started was through a friend of mine who had an RCA 64MB Lyra. I thought it was the most amazing thing ever!

For about four years, I've always wanted it for some reason until one day I won a bid on eBay and bought it finally for $25. I felt as if I connected with my childhood somehow and closed a chapter in my life. :P~

[Nick @ Mar 11th 2008 10:38AM]

My dad gave me a Diamond Rio 500 before I went to Italy in 2000... I remember trying to update the firmware on it and going to some crappy country western bands website all the time by mistake (They were called Diamond Rio, go figure).
Maaan I miss that little thing. I remember I got a 256 meg chip for it and was the talk of the freshman cafeteria :)


But when all's said and done, it was this little guy that paved the way for a certain Cupertino monstrosity to become the flagship face of MP3 players the world over.
MPMan F10, WE SALUTE YOU! Feliz cumpleanos de Mexico!

[Rainier @ Mar 11th 2008 10:40AM]

I still have my Diamond Rio! :) I liked how easy it was just to drag and drop mp3 tracks onto it via explorer.

[dj-kenpo @ Mar 11th 2008 1:31PM]

I still have my Diamond rio pmp 300 as well.
32mb but with another 32mb card to make a whopping 64mb!
32mb smartmedia cost me $150 back in those days.

[Dale @ Mar 11th 2008 10:43AM]

Wow, totally wasn't expecting the "Will it play Doom?" comment.

[mike @ Mar 11th 2008 10:47AM]

I still have mine though I can't find the USB cable.

[mike @ Mar 11th 2008 10:49AM]

Is the reply thing still broken? That was to Kev by the way.

[dj-kenpo @ Mar 11th 2008 1:33PM]

dude, the originals didn't have usb. you have liek a 3rd generation...
no l33t!
not unless you have the parallel port!

[mike @ Mar 11th 2008 10:48AM]

There was no 256MB cards for the Rio 500. Smart Media never went above 128MB...

[mike @ Mar 11th 2008 10:50AM]

This was to Nick...

[Tony @ Mar 11th 2008 6:58PM]

This is to Mike.

[Niyoko @ Mar 11th 2008 10:48AM]

HAHA, I had one of these. I always wanted to get more flash memory for it, lol. It's 32MB wasn't great, but it helped make yard work more enjoyable.^^

[Will @ Mar 11th 2008 11:05AM]

I loved my Rio PMP300! If you encoded your .mp3 files in 96 kbps, you could fit an entire Weezer album on it. Great little player.

[John @ Mar 11th 2008 11:48AM]

Haha! I loved mine too. I got it as soon as they came out. It was funny though trying to explain to people what it was (yes folks, there was a time when the average person on the street didn't know what a MP3 was). After a while I just gave up and started telling people it was a radio.

[dj-kenpo @ Mar 11th 2008 1:35PM]

ya, I remember people telling me I was stupid back in highschool for hving it. "it only holds 1 cd? dude, that sucks, go get a mini disc.".
I loved it. I could go home for lunch and change all the songs in a few minutes.

I stopped paying for cd's when I was 17 and have never looked back. thanks pmp 300!

[roole @ Mar 11th 2008 11:16AM]

Hah, interesting that this ground-breaking product was brought to market by Korean engineers. I had thought, incorrectly, that it was some US start-up (obviously, not Apple, so keep the snide comments to yourself) that pioneered the MP3 player.

For all the caterwauling I hear about rip-offs of US IP, the Koreans could legitimately claim that companies such as Apple ripped them off (albeit with better design and marketing).

It was not too long ago in forums like these (such as they were ten years ago!) that Koreans were held in about the same esteem as the Chinese are today. How rapidly it all changes: Korea is such a tech powerhouse today.

[spacegravity4me @ Mar 11th 2008 11:20AM]

Back in like 2000, maybe 99, I was like 13 or 14, got my first player, an Intel Pocket Concert! I LOVED that thing! It took 2 AAA batteries and I think lasted maybe 45 minutes, rofl! It was great! None of my friends at school even knew what it was man! I was the king of the world. lol Or at least 9th grade. Who needs friends when you have an mp3 player lol. This makes me feel so old, but I tell you, nothing ever will rock quite the late 90's and the millennium. Cept maybe for 2050. Great times! ;)

[DarkLightConnection Unbanned @ Mar 11th 2008 6:18PM]

I'm with you man... I got my mp3 player at my 14th birthday, but I'm younger I guess because it was a 64MB Lyra :-P

And yes, I miss the late 90's-early 00's... Those were the times.. much better than now. (Or maybe it is me who changed and not the world, but still I miss the times :P)

[bl0nde @ Mar 12th 2008 5:06AM]

Yes yes yes, 64mb lyra FTW. I remember looking at the Compactflash card and thinking "wow, they can fit 64mb in this". I was easily impressed. Then 2 and a half years later, I was the proud owner of a 2nd gen, 10GB iPod and everyone in my school bowed down to me as the king of geekdom.

[Big John @ Mar 11th 2008 11:29AM]

I remember my PMP300! I expanded it to 64MB and couldn't believe I could hold more than one CD at crappy bitrates :-P

Amazing how far we've come in just a decade.

[dj-kenpo @ Mar 11th 2008 1:37PM]

I take it you used 64kbps too?
"whatever, with most headphones you can't tell that big of a difference anyways..."
so i told myself. 32+32mb FTW!

[Big John @ Mar 11th 2008 3:41PM]

I don't remember exactly, it was 64 or 128. I want to say I used a mix of the two, with select tracks putting out 128.

[Michael Remis @ Mar 11th 2008 11:31AM]

Had the Creative Nomad II. 64mb and then bought the 128mb smart media. It was like 120 bucks for 128 megs. I got the player for like 400.

That was a long time ago.

[AlphaTeam @ Mar 11th 2008 11:35AM]

32MBs? Not back my first had 8MB!

[darkstar @ Mar 11th 2008 11:36AM]

my first mp3 player was from D-link. it played songs burned onto cds, barely. i immmediately returned it!

the next mp3 cd player was from iRiver. 15mm thin, it was the slickest and most expensive at $180. but it was worth every penny!!

[jbulava @ Mar 11th 2008 11:46AM]

My first MP3 player was the 32MB (Yellow) I-Jam. It was a bit misleading as it came with two 16MB SD cards. You could fit 4 songs each (or 5 Beatles songs)! Don't forget the parallel port 'Jam Station' to get those songs on the cards. Oh and if the bit rate was not 128, it would be like speeding up and slowing down a turntable. Reactions from friends--"What's an MP3?"

[Yipcanjo @ Mar 11th 2008 11:57AM]

Oh...sweet, sweet early MP3 player action! :)

I had the earliest Rio PMP300 player that I purchased from a buddy of mine. The piggy-backed parallel cable was slow-as-molasses, but it worked! Besides, with only 32megs on board, you weren't ever transferring for too long.

I don't remember what happened to that player, but I eventually upgraded to the PMP500 w/ USB support and a backlit display. That thing was AWESOME! I also loved the drag n' drop via explorer method of loading it up. After that sucker got stolen, I moved on to the Rio Nitrus for awhile. A good player that had some "issues". Then an iPod, and then another iPod (didn't pay for either of them, thank you very much) and finally my Zune 30 that I have now.

No jokes. I'm quite fond of it.