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MPXT

Started by Scott Bradshaw, February 11, 2004, 01:57:31 PM

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frank

Matthias answered a couple questions for me, on the Mpxplay site,
about lcd and keypad.
I have an Optrex 20x4, with hd4478 chip.

That still leaves the what and why of Mpxt,
and Mpxplay with Mpxt vs. without.
Dos7 vs Dos6.22?  FreeDos maybe?
With or without windows?

frank

@matthias
in your above example for an autoexec.bat,
what and where is xmsdsk.exe?

frank

nevermind, I found xmsdsk on simtel.com.

but, it doesn't free up any more memory,
at least for me, so why use it?
before I found it, I had 621k free,
and after using it, still 621k.

frank

I found a FULL installation of MsDos 7.10 here:
http://newdos.yginfo.net/msdos71/index.htm" target="_blank">http://newdos.yginfo.net/msdos71/index.htm
no more need for Win9x, if all you want is Dos 7.

I came across that while searching for share.exe,
which part of the dos networking seems to need.

matthias

@frank
xmsdsk will provide a ram disk. So you can copy certain files and programms to the ram disk. Mpxplay will start and act much faster. You copy them from the autoexec.bat to the ram drive (e.g. r: ) and  start the programm from r:. That´s all.
For example:
------------------------------------
LH C:DriversXMSDSK.EXE 4096 R: /Y
if exist copy mpxplay.* r:
------------------------------------
This will install a RAM disk as drive r: and 4.096 KByte large and copies mpxplay.exe and mpxplay.ini to r:.

I use Windows 98 for two main reasons:
1.) Full support of long file names
2.) Easy administration over my WLAN  
In my software you can select if you like to start the player or Windows from the autoexec.bat without connecting a monitor to your MP3 player. You don´t need Windows to start mpxplay and I won´t do that anyway. Before I switched to MPXPLAY I used a MP3 player based on Windows2000 (Winamap and Albumlist) with a LCD and IRDA. It was a pain in the a....

Share.exe:
Share was needed in DOS 6.22 when you use TCP/IP and want to use your PC as a Server in your network. But it needs too much DOS memory. So when you´ve loaded the full TCP/IP stack + share.exe you won´t be able to start anything else ;-). If you´re looking for a network version based on DOS I can provide you with all information. I would recommend to use netbui protocoll instead of TCP/IP. netbui needs less memory and will do the same as TCP/IP. This solution works pretty good on one of my MP3 players. But don´t forget to install netbui protokoll on all PCs you like to connect.
Share.exe won´t work with DOS 7.10!!!

"It's a frontend for Mpxplay: why?
What does it do or add to mpxplay?
I can't run mpxplay by itself?"
--> I use MPXT for two reasons:
1.) I love the configuration of the LCD output - it´s just perfect and much easier to handle then the LCD support of mpxplay (thanks to Scott and Brent)
2.) MPXT allows you to play all your MP3 files through the database created by MPXT or single playlists or single drives or files from your cd-rom

MPXT will start before and instead of mxplay. When you choose what to play (database, playlist...)fro m the menu it will start mpxplay.  

MPXT adds easier  navigation through your files or directories. If you just have a few MP3s on your harddisk you can use mpxplay only, but if you´re looking for a menu based navigation I recommend to use MPXT as a frontend.

I will launch a new version of my MP3 player over the next days. I made a few bug fixes and I will add mpxplays fastlist support. So you can create fastlists on the fly just by a menu on your LCD Now the autoexec.bat gets very very long ;-).

If you need more informations you can mail me:
matthias_budde at web.de - please write "mp3 player" in the subject line. If collected over 250 MB of Dos software and drivers so far.

Matthias


admin

Matthias:

I gave up trying to figure out why MpXT's IR handling stopped working when shelling out to MPXPlay.  MPXPlay's IR handling seems to work ok, so we might as well use it.

I have a new test version of MpXT ready.  It's now properly shutting down the com port before shelling out to MPXPlay.  I also had to make a couple of minor changes to the format of mpxt.cfg  

To test it out:
Setup MPXPlay to use UIR.  Configure the mpxt.cfg file like normal, but be sure to specify where MPXPlay.ini is located.

Assuming that I've got all of the bugs fixed, MpXT should be able to load, add, and save the IR codes to MPXPlay.ini  :-)

http://techworld.dyndns.org/download/mpxttest5.zip" target="_blank">http://techworld.dyndns.org/download/mpxttest5.zip

matthias

Brent:
I´ll try that next weekend and I´ll give you a feedback.

Thanks

Matthias
http://www.mbudde.de/mp3player/mp3_start.htm" target="_blank">http://www.mbudde.de/mp3player/mp3_start.htm

admin

Matthias:

I have another test version ready.  I'd tell you what was in it, but that would spoil the surprise   http://techworld.dyndns.org/discus/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=":-)" BORDER=0>

Hint: Look under [player settings] in mpxt.cfg

Anyway, when you get the chance, let me know how it goes.  If it seems fairly solid, I'll call it "Beta 3" and post it on the web page.


http://techworld.dyndns.org/download/mpxttest6.zip">  http://techworld.dyndns.org/download/mpxttest6.zip

matthias

Hey, this looks like a hugh step:
; Use Long Filenames
UseLFN=True

I´ll try that as soon as possible. I´m a little bit busy at the moment. My 5 month old daughter needs a lot time ;-)
But I was already able to make a DOS based Wireless Lan Version of my MP3 player. Works pretty good and stable. No more Windows, no more handling music files on the player and I can access the player via FTP and can control it by a remote tool similar to PCAnywhere.

admin

Matthias:

Lfn playlists should be working now, eliminating the need for adding a bunch of entries to fileinfo.cfg

For the audio files, though, it still uses the short names.  If I were to add support for lfn audio files, it would involve making a number of changes to mpxfdb.pas  Heck, at point I'm not sure what half of the functions in mpxfdb.pas do.

Congratulations on dumping Windows.  Someday I'd like to dump it completely, but for now I use it for transfering files to the player, use VNC to control it remotely, and use the Windows defragger to defrag the drive.  

matthias

What a pain.
Lfn doesn´t work on a network drive...


I used Windows the same way, but it was always a pain sitting in front of the LCD display - will this ****ty OS start or not... LOL

matthias

I´ve been playing around with the new version. Looks pretty good. But one general question.
I never understood how to use the search by album, song and artist feature in the menu.
Can you give me an idea?

matthias

Hi Brent,

I´m still alive, but have been a little busy.
But things are going forward, so version 2 of my Mp3 player will be ready in a few weeks.
V 2 will have plug and play support for tcp/ip network (pci) and plug and play support for ext. usb harddisks. Means just put in a pci network card and V2 will build the entire tcp/ip netowrk connection inkl. dos server function.
MPXPLAY fastlist and MPXT m3u support are included and many features more.
Any one out there who want´s to be beta tester :-)?

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