An MP3 playing capability is being added to one of the 1980s’ most popular computers, the Amiga A3000, thanks to a newly released piece of software for a never-released upgrade to the machine.
The Amiga A3000 was originally released without the capacity to play MP3s, and its successor, the AA3000, was never commercially released at all; it was designed to have a powerful digital signal processing (DSP) chip, the DSP3210, that would have enabled the playing of such files, but the project was shelved.
However, the AA3000’s DSP has now tempted software engineer Wrangler to develop the necessary MPEG layer 2 and 3 decoder, and the fruits of his work are available on GitHub.
Seeing as the original A3000 doesn’t have enough grunt to play MP3s, this opens up a whole new realm of capabilities for Amiga enthusiasts and retrocomputing fans.
