Table of content
Hardware
Hardware
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Info
This section is intended to deal primary with physical stuff
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DigiCam
Some DigiCam info's
I have this cute Kodak-DC280 with a 20MB CompactFlashCard, serial and USB interface.
The really surprising transfer times I found as follows:
- USB to P2-400 20MB in 3 min (can go in accu operation)
- Serial to P1-75 20MB in 40 min (with power supply only)
- Smartcard/PCMIA Adaptor to P1-75 20MB in 2 min
The original Kodak 1350mAh-NIMH-accus last for more than 24MB of pictures where 3/4 of my pictures are usually shot with flash.
I've bought a second set of Olympus 1600mAh-NIMH-accus and managed about 30MB pictures with it.
I tried also a set of 900mAh NiCd, but they do not serve more than 5 pictures, so I put them aside.
I'll go for another test with rechargable Alkaline accus next time, as I made good experience with other equipments which need 1,5V packs and don't like accu-supplies with 1,2V
Though the camera can manage up to 2,3million pixels (file-sizes up to 600kB), I usually take the second lowest quality out of 6 levels for standard shots. For web-display I reduce the size of those pictures down to 640*480 with 50%Jpeg compression. This way the jpegs are in a size from 30-60kB only.
I'm not so much a photographer, but I've made nearly 3000 pics within a year, which I didn't with my old standard camera altogether in 20 years. This technology changes completely behavior. It's really exiting just to shoot and trash or store and have them available on a monitor the fastest way.
Now I've to think about upgrades for my PC-stuff, though my LCD-monitor is fantastic, it's not cabable to show the maximal possible colors and size of the camera. There is a video interface, but that is a degradation as well.
The same is valid for the printer, it's just a nice feature to print on a standard printer.
I've made a test with a 640*480 pic to print at a professional Fotoshop, the results were amazing. This resolution is just fine for a photo of half the size of a letter page. Cost around 1.5$
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HDD-Manufacturer Tools
http://www.maxtor.com/products/DiamondMax/software/maxblast/index.html
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz_utilities.html
http://service.quantum.com/softsource/disk_docs/dm2000.htm
http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm
http://www.fcpa.com/cgi-bin/goFrames.cgi/support/su_drivers.html
http://www.wdc.com/service/ftp/drives.html#dlgtools
Also , this utilities may help
http://www.ontrack.com/ not free
http://www.geocities.com/prestonlewis/ Data Recovery.Zip ( Freeware )
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EZ-drive
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Intro
Now this is a true scary story I can tell about "EASY-DRIVE" or Ezdrive. If any of the following conditions don't apply for your configuration, you don't need to read any further, or just for curiosity only.
Preconditions:
- The MoBo supports LBA>8Gigs
- Award BIOS prior june '99 supports only <32Gigs
- You have a multi-boot environment via Masterbootrecord (MBR)
- You want to install an additional Big Baby >32Gigs
Exclusions:
- There is no BIOS upgrade for your MoBo, darn :-(
- You just want a secondary drive for mass storage, not a new master hdd.
Reasons:
- You want to keep the drive for further systems to come
- Your multiboot environment isn't that easy to be simply transferred to a new drive. Usually any imageing stuff can deal only with one active primary partition and no passive ones.
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The trial
Ok, what should be easier, than putting up a new slave to your existing master?
Jumpers, no big deal; BIOS to auto detect; fire it up......mmh nogo :-(
BIOS to individual settings as per manual; fire it up......nogo :-(
Well, there is a disk provided with these big babies, mine is called MaxBlast, installing an overlay software to circumvent the BIOS problems.
Somehow I felt reminded back to 1986 where I had to deal with a diskmanager to let my AT see a 40Megabytes drive behind the 32MB border, don't laugh, same problem other time.
Ok, studied the manual, the website, all books and FAQ's about the latter, fireed up the boot-diskette. Bummer, all BootManager gone on HDD1.
Now that was the point where my speeking habits were lacking of childproof.
BootManagers recovery disk didn't work (I still don't know why's that at all)
PartitionMagics rescue disk allowed only to see the installed partitions on HDD1 and 2 as Ezdrives (If I only know anyway what that means).
S**ker that, PM's website didn't tell anything about conflicts with overlay diskmanagers:-(
No system Disk at all was bootable, except the darn Win98-CD, but that was a major step, I was far away from.
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The recovery
Reboot again and again
Change BIOS again and again
Reread manuals again and again.
AHHH, there is a little sidenote about Powermax diagnose tool, but where is it than.
MMMH, website tells it's integrated in the latest MaxBlast (what a true name, blasts anything).
One of the starting points in MaxBlast, aside partitioning, tells about miscallaneous administrative options.
HAH, there it is, shamefully mixed under a lot of ridiculous stuff "Write/Restore track 0"
That did the trick to get the box working again.
Of course the big baby is dead now again.
Study again manual, to find the optional jumper settings to disable >32Gigs for the Bios.
There is also a D/L for it to force the BIOS to see it that way, just for the darn Award-BIOS lack.
Indeed it did, the BIOS recognizes the drive now as 32Gig drive. It's accessable for DOS and PartitionMagic, so better than nothing, fire it up and use it as backup media.
However this is not acceptable, I'd made research for overlay software to be installed from DOS-level, no luck.
The only alternative is a separate ATA/100 controller card.
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The cure
Got an Abit HotRod ATA100 card, which supports also RAID 0, 1, 0+1 (new adventures to come)
It appears as SCSI-drive in the device control pan and allows for separate booting, if the BIOS has this option. Mine is set now to SCSI,C:,A:
This way I've now 6 different primary partitions for booting. This is really sufficient, rather than dealing with dynamic bootmanagers, always rewriting the partition definitions.
However it wasn't my primary goal to have more boot facilities and it was still a stony way to go.
Well, now disabled the slave in the BIOS, reconfigure the cables and jumpers, looked into BIOS of ATA-card and surprise it still only showed 32Gigs ( Good that there was no big hammer around.)
The cards manual doesn't say much about the ATA features, it talks mainly about setting up the different RAID modes, which weren't applicable for me at this time.
I bite the dust and just formatted again with this darn EZ-drive thingy.
Quelle surprise, it asked for an OS-disk and put the sys-files on my new Drive D:
The Powermax status showed now my fully Big Baby with 81,9GB and a complete DOS-Partition table.
However my Primary Master was still shown as EZ-drive and unaccessable, but now the principle was clear as mud. I just simply restored the track0 again back to the master and everthing was well in order.
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The rant
THIS WHOLE CRAP IS NOWHERE DOCUMENTED
I'm fed up with the support, manuals, faq's, white books and what ever from:
BIOSTAR (mobo), Award (bios), Maxtor (EZ-drive), Powerquest (Partition and Bootmagic)
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Further mess
If you haven't setup with EZ-drive your Big Baby correct from the first time, concerning sizes and number of partitions, do it again, don't do it with Partition Magic.
I went that way and had to wait hours and hours to move and to add new partitions, though the dang thing was completely empty.
Uninstall PM and reinstall it without Drivemapper. This sucker will lockup with larger than 8Gigs partitions, you almost don't need it anyway, if you make a thorough planing for your disk.
I can't recall how often these days I:
- went into BIOS
- rebooted to floppy
- rebooted to system
One thing I had to do for sake only once, reinstall windows over the top of itself on one boot partititon :-(
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The rave
My system is up now with these partitions
HDD1:
- primary C 700MB OEM-Windows
- primary C 600MB 98Lite sleek full
- primary C 250MB 98Lite sleek mini on FAT16
- logical D 3Gigs Data
- logical E 1Gig Programs
- logical F 4Gig Music and Images
HDD2:
- primary D hidden, or C if I boot SCSI 2Gig empty except sysfiles
- logical G Backup data
- logical H Backup progs
- logical I Backup first primary
- logical J Backup second primary
- logical K Backup third primary
- logical L 16Gig music
- logical M 16Gig empty
- logical N 16Gig empty
- logical O 16 Gig empty
- logical P 4,4 Gig backup images
Ok , rock'n roll come down here :-)
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Lessons learned
If I would have to do it again:
- Ensure no use of D: as programs partition, otherwise you are in deep shit.
- Hide the existing partition D on the current drive temporarily to make place for the new primary
- Shutdown, not to have clutter with your drive mappings
- Remove any other hdd from the IDE (this prevents from any mess with the MBR)
- Configure the new HDD as master
- Makeup a thorough Partition planing
- Let the dang EZ-drive do his job
- Install basic sys to c: with a win rescue floppy, you'll get asked for it by EZ-drive
- Reattach your previous HDD as it was
- Attach the new drive where appropriate
- Configure jumpers accordingly
- Do the necessary BIOS settings on the MoBo, optional also on the ATA-Card (if you need one in the first place)
- Fire it up and the letters are now c: old boot, d: new boot, all logicals from old, all logicals from new
- Call Partition magic, to hide the primary of the new HDD, do it
- Now unhide the first logical from the old HDD to have all your letters back in order
Reboot, from that point onward, you are in a perfect condition and do whatever you want with the new big babe.
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DAP Jukebox
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The box
This is just a short summary review, for deeper information look at the links further below.
This nice handy piece of Hardware is just to attach via USB to your PC. It will be automatically identified after the Software is installed.
It comes along with an AC/DC adaptor, which can take nearly any AC voltage/frequency used worldwide. The DC-output is 12V 1,5A.
You can use also direct connection to your car-adapter, the input range isn't problematic.
Any decent other adaptor with the same output will serve it as well.
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Batteries
The Jukebox came along with 2 sets of NiMh batteries. 1600/1800 mA/h
I recommend to charge them initially with an external charger designed for NiMh's.
After about 3 cyles of charging you'll have full capacity of around 4 hours music with one set.
The internal charger is a bit picky sometimes, however this shall be resolved with a firmware upgrade.
There are several incidents reported about melting or smoking batteries inside the Jukebox or outside.
NiMH of this type can raise a short circuit power of 7 Amps, which is a lot. So handle them carefully and always separate them when outside the box.
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Headset
It just sucks :-(
Get a better one, I recommend to use "The Plug " from Koss and modify them with some real earplugs (see the links for the tweak)
Only with in-earphone you'll achieve a sufficient loudness and more important a proper bass sound.
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Firmware
The current release 1.75 is been updated at 20th November 2000
It improves:
- gapless play
- forward/backword function within song but without sound during the scrolltime
- battery charging mishaps
- defrag(called cleanup) and format function on startup
- other bugfixes
If your Jukebox misbehaves to much, just get the latest firmware and reload it. It goes very easy and may prevent from some irregularities in the beginning.
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Software
Duh, that's a piece of bloatware. Only the Playcenter2 invaded my system with some 40Mbytes and 280kB registry crap.
There are two other pieces of bloatware on the CD, I haven't even looked at it.
There is not much custom installation possible:
- CCDB-interface, if you want it or not
- MS-Mediaplayer WMA support, though you might not want it
- CD-ripping module, though you may not need it
- Another player, though you've tons of them around
- You direct it to install on a different partition, it blows half of it anyway into c:\programs
The manual is in PDF, deep nested on the CD, only a short roadmap is supplied in paper format.
There is no simple explorer extension for drag&drop, you need the proprieatary software to do the transfers.
There is an update at nomadworld for Playcenter2.1. There are 3 files of each 5MB available.
You may encounter an error message stating "Expected files not found" when trying to update the SW. In this case you need to download the "Digital Audio Center Ver 4.35.0022 lite" from the Nomad2 download section on the european site.
Install the DAC with minimum options (it's also a piece of bloatware) than run the update for Playcenter 2.1 (which states version 1.00.80, odd configuration management, isn't it?). After this, uninstall the DAC and let some registry cleaners do their work.
This newer version allows now to copy back MP3 files, which are not copyright protected, to your PC.
Most important it can now import M3U files and transfer the whole bunch of a playlist in a single step. Via such a playlist you should establish also the playing order.
The PC2.1 allows only for single file up and down movements within playlists and the JB itself do not provide any support for this.
For shure this will not be the last version of PC. A good number of users report constant crashes under various circumstances (also with Win2K).
In the beginning I'd that too, but I reloaded the firmware, did some registry cleaning and else is fine now.
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Links
http://www.nomadworld.com/ look into the download section for latest Playcenter Software
http://www.europe.creative.com/ look into the download section for the laatest firmware drivers and DAC
http://www.europe.creative.com/jukebox/user/bboard/forum.asp?foru=6 the jukebox user forum in Europe, there is also a newsserver at news.creativelabs.com
http://www.kuren.org/ contains a bunch of nice tips and pictures to the jukebox
http://www.koss.com/ get "The Plug"
http://alltec-gmbh.de/de/content/koss/plug.asp get the best in-ear speaker set in Germany
http://www.hama.co.uk/koss/ find them in the UK
http://www.fixup.net/tips/earbud/30db_sealed_earphone.htm apply this tweak to "The Plug"
http://www.internet-promotions.com/cew-electronic/index.html make up a FM-transmission to the car-radio
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Operation
Though the keys and display indications are properly designed and funtional, don't use them too much. The batteries run out quite fast by doing other tasks than playing songs. It seems that any button oriented action is rereading the disk massively.
There are a bunch of so called EAX sound settings. They lower down initial the volume, drain batteries as well and sound stupid anyway.
You can walk with the JB, but it's not designed for jogging. I'd found no crashes so far while gently moving it around in my jacket.
The use in the car has its limitations. You need either a connectors adaptor for line-in (but how many radios have this?) or go via cassette adaptor. This is poor quality and tricky with the newer RC's with logic control.
I found a FM-transmitter for 70aussie$ (see link above) which gives reasonable results at least inside the car. However you've to fiddle around with a power cable and the transmitter antenna to find the correct position and maintain it, while driving. This is nothing for short trips.
Operating the JB while driving, is as close as impossible, skiping songs is the maximum you can do safely without loosing drive control.
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Wishlist
This was stated after the latest firware release by Jackie Nash of Creative UK:
1. FF within tracks - this is a feature in the new F/W available now through www.creativejukebox.com
2. Sleep function - this is not possible due to architecture design
3. Search by track NAME as well as artist - this is being investigated for future F/W upgrade
4. More info on each file, like bitrate and filesize - this is being investigated
5. Being able to adjust the Volume without having to connect the headphone - this is technically possible, will investigate
6. Crossfade between two songs - investigating, may not be possible on current product
7. A battery-indicator like the one used on mobilphones as well...displayed all the time on the display
- we have been requesting this but engineers tell us it's not possible with current architecture design
8. Tracks played wizard - under investigation
9. Advanced remote for track/album name transfer - under investigation
10. Play all tracks randomly option - under investigation for future F/W update
11.Track order issue - latest PC2 (v2.1) available from nomadworld.com (soon to be available in localised form from creativejukebox.com)
12. Bookmarking - under investigation
13. Resume Function - under investigation
14. Playlists stored with playback preferences - under investigation
15. LCD backlight to stay off when lock switch is on - interesting suggestion, but then how would you know in the dark why the unit is not working. Maybe it could be an option. Will investigate
16. Seamless playback of albums: no gap between tracks - under investigation
17. Additional case accessories - under investigation
18. Length of song and long name display - under investigation
19. A Litio battery - this is not possible
20. Speed-up Hard-Drive - it's as fast as it's gonna get
21. A re-sort button ,on the JB ,for songs in Albums - Why do you need it? Please give more details
22. Cycling menus (scrolling up past 1st track takes you to last track) - under investigation
23. Jukebox as a drive letter - not possible due to architecture
Update from users requests:
24.The bootup time of the Jukebox will be affected in the following scenarios
a) You load new music onto it. The next time you boot the cache is reset and re-built
b) You create a personal playlist with more than 50 tracks
c) You queue up a quantity of tracks into the play queue and then shutdown with those songs still loaded. Next time you boot it will take longer.
25. Make the control keys acting like standard CD-players functions - no reaction yet
26. Queing functionality for all levels of Genre, Artist
27. Delete track function deep nested out of sight, does hamper active playlist.
Editors note:
2. Lame excuse
7. Very lame excuse
23. SDK-developers, here is the target, they are not willing to give it, there are no architectual constraints.
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Summary
All this may sound negative in the first place, however I'm very happy with this box.
It still has great potential for further improvements.
Reckon I've 1400 MP3's on it now, far enough to listen to all favorite songs over weeks without changing anything.
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AIWA-CDC-MP3
I got fed up with searching for adaptors to play my Jukebox MP3 in the car.
FM-Transmitters are tricky to use and the sound isn't that good as expected.
CD-Interface cables are almost to be done by yourself, or will not work due to radio internal logic controls.
I bought a new AIWA-CDC-MP3 car radio.
It can play CDRW-MP3 directly. It's a bit sensitive on rough streets though. The internal buffer seems a bit small.
It's bootup time with an full MP3-CD is about 1 minute.
It's got a nice standard line-in plug for any external device.
Hurrah, I'm a happy customer now.
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