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Comment by gattilorenz | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious how you used it as a daily driver back then. Did you use it for internet access? Granted, JS was less prevalent back then, but I’m not sure what browser you had available. What about listening to mp3s while doing something else, could the m68k manage or are you just not doing those things normally?

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Also not OP, but 90% of everything I do happens in an SSH session. It doesn't really matter what I run on as long as the terminal isn't completely broken. I run `ssh TheHost exec tmux a` from all sorts of devices. A NeXTstation would do fine except I prefer my custom USB-only keyboard.

Not OP, but if it was anything like Macs running on similar hardware - MP3s was not viable, simply not enough grunt. Also most (all?) MP3 decoders relied on a FPU unit to function. But CD's where fine.

I don't know which era of chip you're thinking of, but when I was a kid listening to MP3s, it was the late 90s, and I had a Performa 5200 with a 75 MHz PowerPC 603 (or possibly 603e); it had a FPU, like all PPC chips, and IIRC like the final series of 68k that Apple used, the 68040 which Wikipedia says was also used in some models of NeXT machine — my problem was MacOS and how it multitasked (cooperatively), making MP3 playback clip every few seconds if the player was in the background; and I'm sure it was the OS not the chip, because I later upgraded to a newer computer with a 200 MHz chip, and it behaved exactly the same way.

75Mhz PPC could just barely handle it.

I think the PPC had just enough power to get through a 128Kbit MP3, it was just more efficient than the 68K range which is why Motorola stop developing those. As for the stuttering that sounds about right. Co-operative multitasking is computationally efficient but caused a problematic user experience.

Yeah, I listened to mp3s on my Performa 5260/120. I actually could notice the difference playing 96kbit vs 128kbit mp3s, in how much it affected the computer's performance. Luckily all I was probably doing at the time was chatting on Hotline so it didn't matter TOO much... haha

NeXT had a Motorola 56001 DSP (coprocessor) that could decode MP3 in realtime

mpg123 (command line) worked fine on my turbo dimension cube. Apparently others as well: https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=2691.0

In the 680x0 days we all tossed a CD into the drive and played that. Or put it in the multi-disc cd changer nearby, sometimes along with a few other discs carefully chosen for maximum sonic whiplash when you put them on shuffle.

Or maybe you put a mixtape in the tape deck.

Im currently putting kids to bed and dead tired. So I will dig up stuff and post a better response tomorrow.

But tl,dr: most everything I did was SSH based for network. Otherwise document editing, pdf viewing etc worked fine. I had a turbo color 33mhz with 128mb of ram.

I also had a ton of custom compiled replacement libraries friends and I worked on and we managed to get newer openSSL working with omniweb etc. I was able to use html mode gmail even! :)

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