On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Er!k Hauters wrote:
Hi!
These are the slink-commands.
I'm trying to control my MD with Visual Basic.
:) You aren't the only one. I know of several people with the same
interests, though I'm developing it for *nix (perl under Linux to be
exact) and is more batch than GUI oriented. But interest on slink commands
is common to all of us...
Mine will be GPL, hope yours too ;)
BTW, what device are you using? a CAV-50?
I found an interesting program called listen32. It displays what goes out
your com-port, and what goes in.
I can tell you, there's a lot more going in and out than to
activate 'play'.
I have seen several people with the same interests, maybe we could
join efforts, at least in producing an open and useable s-link protocol
documentation and tips for program implementations. There's a slink
resource page with a mailing list, maybe we could join there. I have a
CD-changer and MD unit command listing whose urls I've mentioned a couple
of times on this list. Let me know in case you can't find them.
I'm going to do some experiment next week. My goal is to make a program that
makes automaticly a database of my MD's. I also want to be able to
communicate with the online cddb (www.cddb.com) so that my md's are
automaticly labeled when I record a new cd.
If you have any other interesting suggestions about what my program should
be able to, please let me know.
hehe :) I intend to do my apps more batch than GUI oriented (Only
thing with GUI will be the database browser, through a web server using
PHP MySQL, maybe if I finally got a cable modem I'll let people play
with it or let them extract/compress on the fly songs and stream 'em), but
here are some suggestions:
I have a CD Caroussel, and a MD unit. As you know, few, very few
CD Caroussels, have the "Custom Memory" function we are accustomed to on
car changers. That implies that when you label, you label a caroussel
position, it doesn't remember the disc itself. If you swap discs, the
CD title remains the same. Mine is a 50+1 CDs unit, I don't even want to
think what a "pain" a 300 CDs unit would be.
Sony claims that some MD units automaticly copy CD-Text; what
hides is that almost all of the few CD-Text enabled original CDs prevent
text to be copied.
Silly, and stupid, but true. So my first thought was to do a script to
duplicate all my CDs with CD-Text added, by querying CDDB and later
toasting them. Then I discover that again, few, very few CD-R units
supports writing CD-Text. All said, I guess you all know what do I think
about CD-Text *practical* usefulness.
Let's go into the matter:
goal 1: Make the app query the discs on the changer, issue cddb
querys, and build a local database with CD and song titles. Having that
you could:
- upload CD-Titles to the caroussel
- be able to label CD to MD compilations.
- be able to have thousands of playing lists to suit your moods
(if you have as much, maybe your wife? :), with a song (not a
whole CD) precision.
- integrate your MP3 collection into the database, so that the app
include them along with the CDs when doing compilations.
- be able (typical knapsack programming problem) to tell your app:
"I have a 78:35:06 blank MD, make a "random" compilation for me
that fits almost or perfectly on that MD, and impose some
restrictions: I also want 40% jungle, 30% rock, 30% industrial.
Sounds like a good job for a computer to do, eh? :)
CD units have terrible random algorithms. On caroussels, this get
even worse. Forget that myth of having a 300 CD caroussel, and "let it
play music randomly". It will repeat same CDs, with same songs, with more
of the 60-70% of playlists contents being the same again and again and
again.
Aside from the persistents "CDs/songs" issue, even in the
theoretical case they do *truly* random playlists, most caroussels I know
can't store what CDs/songs they have played. Truth is that maybe you'd
find (although isn't) more randomness if the same CD weren't played again
until all, or a percentage of the total discs have: in summary, to impose
some restrictions to "randomness".
goal: Today computers have plenty of space and power to cook
several algorithms to suit your "preferred randomness". Having a couple of
caroussels, that cost almost the same as portable units, and a big drive
for MP3 fans, you could have an all-online, worry-less playlists vast
collection of music.
I have more ideas, I'll let you know if you found this
interesting.
greets,
*---(*)---**--
Francisco J. Montilla System Network administrator
[EMAIL PROTECTED] irc: pukkaSevilleSpain
INSFLUG (LiNUX) Coordinator: www.insflug.org -
