Horribly, it read the disk into a memory buffer, then played from the buffer. Ram was expensive, tiny, and power hungry back then. It was pretty shock-sensitive too. Every time it detected a fail, it would have to seek/re-read the section. If you had some decent bass, the song itself could set it off :)
It wasn’t the buffer itself that drew power. It was the need to physically spin the disc faster in order to read the data to build up a buffer. So it would draw more power even if you left it physically stable. And then, if it would actually skip in reading, it would need to seek back to where it was to build up the buffer again.
Sure didn’t seem like it was doing that, It took 6 seconds for it to start playing to fill that six second buffer. But I lacked the equipment to test its playback speed back then. So maybe you’re right.
The anti-skip sucked battery?
Horribly, it read the disk into a memory buffer, then played from the buffer. Ram was expensive, tiny, and power hungry back then. It was pretty shock-sensitive too. Every time it detected a fail, it would have to seek/re-read the section. If you had some decent bass, the song itself could set it off :)
It wasn’t the buffer itself that drew power. It was the need to physically spin the disc faster in order to read the data to build up a buffer. So it would draw more power even if you left it physically stable. And then, if it would actually skip in reading, it would need to seek back to where it was to build up the buffer again.
Sure didn’t seem like it was doing that, It took 6 seconds for it to start playing to fill that six second buffer. But I lacked the equipment to test its playback speed back then. So maybe you’re right.