> o Consider the fact that NO 680x0-based Macintosh MP3 players exist. There
> are a few 680x0-based Amiga players available, however for these you need at
> least a 68040 for real-time decoding. Source: Documentation included with
> these players. (A 68040 @ 40MHz is about 44 MIPS. Source: Motorola pages)
I run a 25 MHz 68030 Amiga A4000 at home as my main system (shortly to get
a G4 PowerPC board) and I really would say that's a minimum spec for
phone-quality MP3 decoding, if you tweak the player's settings. I don't
really use MP3s on any machine, but I've had a few speeches supplied in
MP3 format so I've tried this a few times to know it works :-)
For music, the 040 is a better choice but the Palm's sound capabilities
are probably the limitation here: why decode to 16-bit, stereo sound when
the Palm doesn't do that at present?
I'm not sure how close the 030 compares with the Dragonball, but in theory
an algorithm tailored to the quality level needed by the sound hardware
could deliver a lower-quality, software alternative to dedicated
hardware.
Just a few thoughts...
John
