As a gear-freak, I have an assortment of old MP3 players and headphones accumulated over the last 20 years and have dug out a few bits and pieces to see if they a) still worked, and b) sounded any good for mobile listening. And a couple of fun things have (re)surfaced.
![Image](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/sansa-e200-angle.jpg)
Sandisk Sansa E280v2:
I had several players from Sandisk - a well-known storage chip manufacturer. From their early-2000's E200 series I still have the E280v2 which has 8Gb of internal storage and a slot for a microSD card. Firing this up again, I was surprised to find it still operational and the battery seems to be in quite good nick. Unfortunately the standard firmware is only designed to play MP3 or WMA files - which was quite normal back then.
However I remembered messing around with some alternative operating software called RockBox which could be applied to a wide range of portable music players and had more extensive capabilities. And that is still available, for free.
Installation isn't too hard and RockBox is a great system offering better SQ, a wide range of codec support and even comes with a selection of simple games. Cool!
Chucked a bunch of WAV files onto a 32Gb card (needs to be FAT32 formatted) and away we go. But what about headphones?
From the primitive era of pre-digital cassette-Walkman listening, one design has stood the test of time - originally marketed in 1984 and still available today - The Koss PortaPro headphone.
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61+y3fxkl6L._AC_SX466_.jpg)
Amongst all portable headphones this remains a classic. Great sound for such a small driver with a full and non-fatiguing character, plenty of detail and solid bass. It clamps lightly to the head and doesn't slip under normal circumstances.
Only trouble is that the foam earpads had completely perished so, for now, I've grabbed a couple of pads from a similarly-sized AKG pair and have ordered a replacement set from Japanese brand YAXI - who claim that their pads improve the PortaPro's sonic performance. We'll see.
This combo of Sansa/Rockbox and PortaPro does sound terrific and will make my strolls far more fun, I'm sure.
![Listening :music-listening:](./images/smilies/music/listening.gif)
A note about another neglected player - the Sansa Fuze:
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/618bgbnKprL.jpg)
Released as the successor to the E200, the Fuze was smaller, had better sound and could play a wider range of formats. I wore out 2 of these and one was still lying around. However the back of the player is rubberized and that had begun to perish, becoming unpleasantly sticky and rendering it unuseable. Pity, as this could also be RockBoxed and was a fine little MP3 player.