Random (train of) thought of the day!
Was reminded of my first portable CD player while watching Techmoan's latest video β it's not one of the devices featured in his video, not even the same manufacturer, not at all, but I started wondering which exact model it was regardless...
So:
- I remembered the brand "Universum", a brand name of now-defunct mail order business Quelle (1927-2009)
- ... that I got it in the early 2000s or thereabouts, maybe 2002-ish ...
- ... that it was silver ...
- ... and that it was a pretty basic player.
Well, thanks to this deleted classifieds ad, I now know it was an Universum CDP1013!
... and, yeah, it really was nothing special! Although, as it just tends to happen with these kinds of things, I do have fond memories of it, listening to burned CDs with anisongs, J-pop and J-rock during breaks in school... or walking home one day in winter, player in hand, slipping on the frozen ground, falling on my ass, all while the player tried its best to keep playing despite (IIRC) not having any anti-shock/skip protection...
By 2007 or so, it sadly stopped reading discs, so I moved on to my first MP3 player β 32 whole megabytes of internal storage, woohoo...? β, and it probably got tossed out.
I do still have a portable CD player, a late '80s or early '90s Technics I bought at a flea market maybe around 2015, and I almost want to take it with me sometime, and listen to music like the old days.
Maybe I'll even see if one of those burned anisong CDs still exists.
Kouji Wada's Butterfly or FIRE!!, from a burned CD, on a portable CD player, into wired headphones.
That's a nostalgic thought.
