Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] A good hand held digital recorder
From: Josh Green (jgreen_AT_users.sourceforge.net)
Date: Wed Jan 10 2001 - 08:47:01 EET
rob wrote:
>
> On Sat, 6 Jan 2001, David Olofson wrote:
> > On Wednesday 27 December 2000 11:20, Josh Green wrote:
> > > I'm looking for a good portable digital recorder for recording
> > > sounds and then transferring them to computer via something like
> > > USB. Flash memory would be nice, but suggestions of other recorders
> > > is okay. Needs to support Linux or have open standards for writing
> > > of driver, if you're not sure, please tell me anyways. Would like
> > > it to record raw audio data at 48+ khz, the higher the better. Any
> > > suggestions?
>
> hey all,
> i dunno how much money or time you want to put into it, but with
> off the shelf components (pc104 mb, camcorder battaries, palm, etc) you
> could have a small computer which would fit in a shoulder bag, run linux,
> and you could slap in something like an 40 gig drive if you really felt
> the need. battery life would be much better than a laptop (upwards of 5
> hours depending on how many batteries you want to carry). the whole thing
> could be control-able via serial with a palm or whatever. (the thing that
> makes this better than a labtop in my opinion is the form factor).
> i dunno what audio IO solutions are out there for pc104, but i'm
> sure something could be found (at worse resorting to USB solutions easily
> available).
> regards,
> rob
>
[My response is more related to embedded Linux systems, probably should
find a more appropriate list].
My application is basically to record sounds for making Sound Font
instruments. I therefore don't need a huge amount of recording time.
Like 15 minutes or so of 16 bit mono data would be quite adequate.
You just reminded me that I have an MBX860DEVKIT motherboard. I gave up
on it when I wanted to make a car MP3 player out of it, and realized
that it doesn't have an FPU. It runs Linux though I'm not sure how much
of the hardware is supported as its a Power PC type setup (though I have
gotten it to boot via a networked NFS file system). It has a laptop hard
drive interface, PCMCIA, ethernet, and one PCI and ISA slot using an
expansion board that I also have. I can forsee 2 solutions for this:
1. Use a laptop hard drive
2. Use a PCMCIA flash card to store Linux file system and audio data
I thought I saw something mentioned last time I compiled the kernel
about Flash devices. I'm assuming Linux could boot the root FS from
something like this. I like the idea of using FLASH memory to eliminate
hard disk crashes and provide more battery time. Of course using a
PCMCIA flash card would not allow a PCMCIA sound card, and the bus slots
stand up vertically from the expansion board (lays over the
motherboard), therefore making things a little bigger when putting in an
ISA/PCI sound card (hard disk would be smaller).
I think I'll go the FLASH memory method. Probably need to check out
write speed of FLASH devices. I can't imagine it being slower than a
hard disk though.
Things I need to find:
1. Portable ATX power supply using battery
2. 64mb+ FLASH card
3. A parallel/serial port LCD display and a handful of buttons
I wonder how small I could get a Linux FS to be, I see there are many
"mini" Linux distros, though most are for i86 stuff, need PPC. An
example is LEM which is for i86 and its less than 8mb with XFree!
Probably would end up being a carry over shoulder deal. Would work for
my application though. Thanks for reminding me of this option! Lates..
Josh Green
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