Retro Chic – Casio WMP1 Wrist Audio Player (2000)
What’s the story?
Before the iPod changed the world, Casio seemed to have taken the concept of portable audio to its logical conclusion by embedding an MP3 player into one of its watches. Mind you, with just 32MB of song storage onboard, you needed a very small music collection or the memory of a goldfish to get the most out of it.
Why should I want one?
The Wrist Audio Player was the world’s first watch to play MP3s, so owning one will come in handy when you open that gadget museum you’ve always dreamed about. Besides, wrist-based tech has a certain Dick Tracy appeal to it, so plugging a set of headphones into a (massive) watch still feels futuristic.
What to look for…
Without a couple of key accessories the WMP-1 is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. It came with a USB docking station for loading all four of your songs onto it and without that you’ll be able to listen to nothing more than the sound of silence – and we don’t mean Simon and Garfunkel. You’ll need the original software too (and a Windows PC to run it on). The headphones plug in via an adaptor that attaches at the nine o’clock position, so make sure that’s not missing and you can use any cans you like.
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Comments
acecooper
1 year ago
I have one of these! It comes with a small attachment to clip onto the side to allow you to plug in normal earphones. A small grey docking station is included to connect it to a PC or just to charge. The display glows orange in use and you can make your own animated graphics visuals using the supplied software. The image that is in the scanned photo above is showing the 'dancer' visual which is basically an animated dancer- not that it was in time but his arms would move up and down.
Minus the attachment it's waterproof up to a certain depth. Also, the program doesn't work on anything past Windows 98 so it's been in my room as a relic that's never used.
Because of the limited memory, I used to encode audio as 32kbps mono to get more tracks onto the device. Other times I would just let the software encode it and then I'd get around 7 songs on it.
It was so awesome wearing this when I was a kid and still would be cool if I could get the software working on Windows 7!
fatso83
1 year ago
Actually, a few years ago I contributed to a project that revived the WMP-1 on *nix platforms.
You can get the source code and the story here:
http://folk.ntnu.no/kopseng/content/wmp/
Maybe binaries too - don't remember.
Contact me if there is anything to wonder about.
bjcwolters
37 weeks ago
Hello fasto83,
can you help with my casio wmp-1
i have two cd with software Origenal.
but notting works with windows 7
My system-manager can see my casio -usb watch dongle
but thats oll. now driver ???
i have downloud wmp-manager v.0.1
and mmportv1
but how it works ????? sorry
so it would by nice if you can help me
thanks bart germany.
sorry or my englisch.