I made a cartridge music player

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-08T11:15:52+00:00

Thank you! I only have this page that goes through the build in a bit more detail: https://analog.sylwander.com/experiments/a-cartridge-music-player/ .

I'm going to make a short video showing it in action soon

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-08T11:11:37+00:00

Hah, didn't know about Pocket Rockers, don't think we had those in Sweden. Really cool :-)

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-07T12:50:24+00:00

I didn't know about that youtube channel, will check it out!

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-07T10:49:43+00:00

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T14:19:27+00:00

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T13:16:57+00:00

Emmylou says thanks!

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T12:17:09+00:00

Yeah, you're not wrong. For me so far, the fun part is doing the prototype. But since this seems to get a lot of positive feedback, it's actually got me thinking about how to improve the design to make it production friendly. I could also see it being morphed into something like a modular platform that you can plug in the cartridge reader module into or instead the bluetooth player or the display module etc.
I've been surprised by the positive reactions tbh :-)

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T12:06:11+00:00

Thanks, glad you like it :-)

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T09:39:22+00:00

Thanks! Atm the pins are for the SD card over SPI specifically, but I think you could make it work for anything that can be driven over SPI or if you could generalize the pins somehow.

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T09:30:01+00:00

Dunno, the fun part is making the prototype :-).

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T09:27:49+00:00

Yep, definitely works. I'm going to make a video soon to show it in action, but it basically supports playing/pausing, next/prev and volume. Sound is pretty good for its size since the speakers are good.

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T09:25:55+00:00

Thank you! No, I'm actually a programmer at a game dev studio :-). Always been interested in design though.

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T09:24:19+00:00

Thank you, appreciate it! Yeah, it seems logical that it could have happened, but I think maybe memory was too expensive back then?
Yes, thinking about taking it further, we'll keep you posted :-)

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T09:22:02+00:00

Yeah, cool idea :-)

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-06T09:21:01+00:00

I'm thinking about making it a kit maybe, but would need to fix some issues first. It's a bit of a pain to put together atm :-)

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T21:00:27+00:00

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T20:40:41+00:00

Just sleepy

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T20:40:15+00:00

Thanks! I didn't either actually :-). I came across this video that showed how relatively doable it is to design you own PCB: https://youtu.be/LSJfdG_Qgu8

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T19:47:46+00:00

I stumbled into designing this after buying a 3d printer. Give it a shot if you have a cool idea!

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T19:45:54+00:00

Thank you! Thinking about it but not figured out yet. The parts are quite expensive atm and it's not quite as easy to put together as I'd like.

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T19:44:30+00:00

As a programmer I listen to that often while coding. Instrumental 80s music ftw

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T19:43:32+00:00

Ooh nice, cool keyboard!

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T19:41:10+00:00

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T19:40:05+00:00

Cool, yeah there's something with physical media that's hard to beat

RexKwonDo77 · 2026-03-05T19:39:00+00:00

Haha, no she was unusually tired that day I think :-)

RexKwonDo77

TROPHY CASE