Pico MP3 Player

 

 

 What’s it?

An MP3 Player, obviously, but very small, both in executable size as on screen.

It does not depend on any special external libraries and uses very little system resources.

 

How to install?

Just put it somewhere, it will work from any place without anything further.

Put this help file in the same directory, though, if you want to use it.

Optionally right click on the file and create a shortcut.

If you want the file on the start menu, simply drag that shortcut to it.

 

How does it work?

Well, the buttons should be familiar: Pause, Play/Stop, Previous, Next, Repeat, List, Help and Quit.

You can see the current file list by pressing the list button:

 

Clicking on a song automatically starts playing it.

 

In addition, the file dialog that opens when you press the Play button allows you to select one or more mp3’s to be played consecutively.

Select is by pressing either alt + left mouse button for a consecutive selection or by pressing ctrl + left mouse button for selecting multiple individual files.

You can also drag and drop one or more mp3’s from Explorer or the even better the Windows Search Dialog, so you are not limited to files in one directory.

Again, select is by pressing either alt + left mouse button for a consecutive selection or by pressing ctrl + left mouse button for selecting multiple individual files.

The last two features go a long way in compensating for the fact that Picomp3 does not have a database or search features of its own.

 

Not much else really, it just plays MP3’s J 

 

 

Who wrote it and why?

Pico mp3 is written by Thaddy de Koning and is released as freeware.

Why? Well, simply because I do not like the mediaplayer eating all my resources and cpu time:

It is a also demonstration of the fact that MP3 players need not be several megabytes huge.

It is written in assembler and Delphi, using the KOL library by Vladimir Kladov and available at http://www.xcl.cjb.net.

Part of it is based on original MP3 code in Delphi by “fobmagog”.

Homepage: http://delphimpeg.sourceforge.net/

My adapted – smaller code, better thread handling - version is available on request, see below.

 

Whot, no Skins?

No, one of the reasons it’s so small: is the lack of an over-elaborate user interface.

The source code (apart from some assembler optimizations, but in working order) is available for free, so you can always add Skin support yourself.

 

What does it cost?

Niente, Nada, Nothing

Freeware.

But if you really, really like it and use it, send me a 5 euro banknote and I’ll have a beer, maybe two:

 

Just in case, my address:

Willem van Hillegaersbergstraat 143B

3051 RH Rotterdam

The Netherlands

 

 

System requirements

Minimum Pentium 100, Win95 and 16MB memory should do.

 

Known issues:

Due to the way the player thread is currently implemented there is a slight delay when you pause an mp3.

I am not sure I want to solve this, since this way provides better playback response and timing.

 

Please report any bugs or suggestions to me: mailto:thaddy@thaddy.com

 

 

Have fun,

 

Thaddy

 

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